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I have prepared several USB 2.0 sticks with bootable images for Centos 7 and 8. I have tried different ports and thumb drives. When I hold down "alt" key and start the Mac Mini I can see the USB stick and it says EFI Boot. All is normal. However, when I select that drive, the screen freezes and nothing else happens.
Any idea why this happens and how I can get installed from USB Drive?
Mac mini, macOS 10.13
macOS does not play well with Linux so it is not unusual for the macOS Startup Disk System Preference not to recognize a non-Apple OS boot disk.
I've never used CentOS so I'm not sure how it behaves on a Mac, but it would not be my choice to use on a Mac since Macs do require special configuration of drivers that may not be included in CentOS by default. Also I have seen a Mac Mini have boot issues which was due to the video driver and/or video configuration in the Linux installer. I remember I had to use a special boot parameter to the Linux kernel in order to get some Linux disks to boot on a Mini. I don't recall the specific setting as that was a few years ago.
If you want to use Linux on a Mac, then I suggest using Linux Mint or one of the Ubuntu flavors such as Kubuntu or Ubuntu-MATE as they should just work on a Mac. I know a co-worker has been installing Linux Mint on our organization's old Apple laptops for years because it just works.
I know when booting Knoppix Linux on a Mac that the Mac appears to be frozen on the boot picker menu and/or a black screen until Knoppix reaches the Desktop. This is due to the Apple hardware/firmware behavior which is very poor. Make sure to give Linux lots of time to finish booting just in case this is happening to CentOS as well. My guess is you will need to provide a custom kernel parameter during boot.
macOS does not play well with Linux so it is not unusual for the macOS Startup Disk System Preference not to recognize a non-Apple OS boot disk.
I've never used CentOS so I'm not sure how it behaves on a Mac, but it would not be my choice to use on a Mac since Macs do require special configuration of drivers that may not be included in CentOS by default. Also I have seen a Mac Mini have boot issues which was due to the video driver and/or video configuration in the Linux installer. I remember I had to use a special boot parameter to the Linux kernel in order to get some Linux disks to boot on a Mini. I don't recall the specific setting as that was a few years ago.
If you want to use Linux on a Mac, then I suggest using Linux Mint or one of the Ubuntu flavors such as Kubuntu or Ubuntu-MATE as they should just work on a Mac. I know a co-worker has been installing Linux Mint on our organization's old Apple laptops for years because it just works.
I know when booting Knoppix Linux on a Mac that the Mac appears to be frozen on the boot picker menu and/or a black screen until Knoppix reaches the Desktop. This is due to the Apple hardware/firmware behavior which is very poor. Make sure to give Linux lots of time to finish booting just in case this is happening to CentOS as well. My guess is you will need to provide a custom kernel parameter during boot.
That is a question better addressed by the Centos community. Other than that, perhaps you did not properly create the USB sticks and are the versions you are attempting to install compatible with a 2011 MacMini.
I believe this has something to do with the Mac "bios/firmware". The usb drives boot on other non-Mac systems.
They are seen when booting with "option" key during start-up, but not seen when starting to "Cmd+R" recovery mode.
Thanks. Your answer turned out to be 100% correct. I downloaded both Ubuntu 21.04 and the most recent version of Linux Mint and created separate bootable USB drives. Both were able to boot from the startup menu. Thanks kindly for your answer.
FYI, it may be possible to make the CentOS installers boot, but only if you are already familiar with using Linux if you really want or need CentOS. If the installer has issues booting on the Mac, then most likely the full installation will have the same issue, plus I'm not sure if CentOS includes the extra drivers that may be necessary for a Mac installation.
A better option is to install Linux into a Virtual Machine. For many use cases this may be more than sufficient.
A virtual machine will have brutally poor performance on a Mac Mini 2011 even with the 16GB of RAM.
Mac Mini 2011 will not boot from USB stick
