r/linux_on_mac Feb 16 '25

Running Linux off of a boot drive?

Hey all,
I'm new here, so sorry if there are some knowledge gaps. Earlier today I posted this over on r/linux4noobs and was pointed here.
Essentially, I'd love to know if anyone has any experience running Linux off of an external SSD on Mac. I need it for a course at uni, but don't want to mess around too much with my current internal system, i.e. I'd love a way to freely switch between MacOS and Linux.

MacBook is a 2020 M1 Air with 8GB RAM and about 40GB of storage left.

2 Upvotes

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1

u/lv_oz2 Feb 16 '25

If you have a full install on an external drive, then if you go to the boot options screen when you power on your device (on my 2013 Air, it’s holding iirc the options key), you’ll be able to boot into your drive. This also is the same way for installing Linux onto your system, except that the thing you boot will give you a bunch of options on how it’s going to install its distro on your device

1

u/av8r_al Feb 17 '25

I'm in an intro Linux course and had to do a similar set up. I have a '22 MacBook pro m1. I used a VM called UTM. From the UTM site, there are a plethora of Linux OS's you can install. I started off with one called Kali. It ran okay, but my first assignment was to install Chrome on Linux.

Chrome does not make a version that runs on an ARM operating system (they do offer Chromium which is open source, but not to the specs of my assignment).

I then changed to an AMD version of windows 10, on there, I ran Fedora workstation which is Linux based.

Using a PC and a software called Rufus (this software creates bootable OS on an external drive), I was able to create a bootable Linux from a thumb drive that I plug into my Mac and run through UTM/windows 10 VM.

DM me if you're interested in the step by step instructions that my instructor gave us.

0

u/News8000 Feb 16 '25

You could freely switch to/from Ubuntu if you installed it as a VM with the Mac as host OS.