Installing Debian Squeeze on Macbook Pro 13" (late 2010)

Shrinking MAC OS partition
Is almost impossible. Some people reported that DiskUtility hanged up in the middle of the process. For me, I ended up reformat the entire disk, and then re-install MAC OS on a small newly created partition (29GB), and left the rest as "FREE SPACE".


Installing rEFIt
Is perhaps the simplest task among all. rEFIt can be downloaded from:
http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Run the installer, and then reboot twice to be able to see the changes.


Creating bootable USB disk

1. Download Debian installation disk image from: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
2. Convert iso to img by using: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso
3. Insert an empty USB drive (will be formatted)
4. Run diskutil list to find out device node: e.g. /dev/disk2
5. Unmount USB: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
6. Write the bootable drive: sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m

thanks to: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

Note:

• also work on SD card
• need to use the full CD installation, because to get macbook's wireless card to work with linux it will need extra effort which can be done later. If you use the network installer CD image, you will end up getting a merely CLI debian.

Installing Debian

1. Insert USB or SD card, reboot and choose to boot from USB.
2. Install as usual.
3. Reboot.
4. Run rEFIt's partition manager on the boot screen.
5. Choose to boot from Linux.
6. And voila you'll got a Debian with no Internet connection because wifi is not working.

Hopefully I can later successfully install wifi driver for Broadcam BCM4322.


Some useful readings:
http://wiki.debian.org/wl#Squeeze
http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook