Can't boot into Mageia with usb stick on iMac

[ArchitS]

Hello everyone!

New user to the linux world, have always tried many distros but always have ended up back into the Apple ecosystem which I am a huge fan of, especially macOS. But now I have decided to move for real and I have been distro hopping a little bit, started with elementaryOS, now at opensuse leap which will be discontinued in the future, so I am looking elsewhere and really like Mageia, but the installtion process seem pretty complicated.

My device; iMac (2017 I think)
intel core i5-7360U CPU @2.30 Hz
intel irus plus graphics 640

I have a 125GB usb stick, fully formatted it to fat32 and used dd to burn the iso into my usb stick. Then i restarted and when I try to boot into mageia by pressing the option key (how you do it in a mac), I don't see my usb stick/drive listed (can only see default EFI which has opensuse right now), I don't understand why this isn't working. First time I used Unetbootin, which I later figured it isn't supported, but then I re-did the whole thing and used dd, why is it not working now??

Please help, been with this for hours, any help asap would be appreciated. Keep in mind I am still a inexperienced user to the linux world, so please explain it to me as I am a 5 year old.

[doktor5000]

Hi there, would be appreciated if you would mention what particular image you downloaded and if you verified the checksum for that image after downloading it.

I have a 125GB usb stick, fully formatted it to fat32 and used dd to burn the iso into my usb stick.

That doesn't make much sense, dd overwrites what's on the stick blockwise, no need to format it beforehand.

[morgano]

Welcome to Mageia and our forum!

I have a 125GB usb stick, fully formatted it to fat32 and used dd to burn the iso into my usb stick.

I am thinking maybe you did dd to that partition you formatted? That is wrong, because you should dd the image to the root of the device, as the image contain the partitioning.
Example dd to dev/sdc, not dev/sdc1 (and, as said, no need to format)

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... lash_drive

Looking at that page we seem to miss information on how to use MacOS to write to USB stick. Anyone is welcome to help on that.

[ArchitS]

Hi there, would be appreciated if you would mention what particular image you downloaded and if you verified the checksum for that image after downloading it.

Live Image, Plasma, 64bit. Haven't verified the checksum, as I said I am still new to the linux world and I find some advanced commands a little but confusing though I am learning everyday. That being said, I am not against it, just that I have installed 4 ISOs so I don't think all of them would be corrupted or broken.

Sorry, didn't know about not needing to format for dd.

[ArchitS]

I am thinking maybe you did dd to that partition you formatted? That is wrong, because you should dd the image to the root of the device, as the image contain the partitioning.
Example dd to dev/sdc, not dev/sdc1 (and, as said, no need to format)

Hey! I am using a usb drive with no partitions to avoid confusion + I have enough usb drives. I also just followed some instructions online as to how to use DD to burn a iso into a usb stick

Some videos I used for help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvmlGkojRHw

I may have made this mistake: Example dd to dev/sdc, not dev/sdc1 (and, as said, no need to format)

Also do I unmount the usb drive and then run dd or do I mount it, that link guide is certainly helpful, but please clarify regarding the mount.

Appreciate all the support and help y'all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74A6pVrv0CA&t=480s

[doktor5000]

Good news! This advise; Example dd to dev/sdc, not dev/sdc1 , worked! Thank you so much for the support.