[gurutech]

I have a Macbook that I "inherited" from a friend who needed the data recovered. This went smoothly, although the hard drive went south, and I'm thinking the motherboard may be on its way out as well.

I bought a new hard drive for it, and somehow I am able to boot Linux from CD, and it will let me install to the hard drive, however when I boot the laptop from the hard drive, all I get is a blank screen with a flashing folder icon on it with a question mark on it.

Not sure exactly what this means, but I think it's safe to assume it means that it can't boot of a non-Mac partition.

How can I get the Macbook to boot from the hard drive with a Linux partition on it, or how can I get a copy of OSX (legally) to install on this Macbook? The laptop is about 3-4 years old, Apple's site says it's from around 2009, and of course, out of warranty.

Can I just download a copy of the OS for a small fee from Apple? Or is there a "trick" to get the Mac to boot to Linux?

[Headrush]

Did you install a boot loader that works with EFI?

More info and help: http://refit.sourceforge.net/

[gurutech]

No, haven't done that... Will check that out.

Will it "ruin" a previous installation of Linux? or does it just adjust the partitions so this EFI thing boots first, then loads GRUB, which loads Linux?