heeeelp me im desperate

[lolren]

i got a imac20 very cheap from a friend. Specs are 1 tb hdd, 4 gb ram ati radeon x1600 video card,dvd rom is not working. but for the price i pay for this(350 euros) is very good. problem is , i am not a fan of osx .Linux is my choise, evident. I read every day phoronix, as my first site and last when i go to sleep. (yup, fan of linux, michael, and the others).great work.
Let me cut to the chase: i cannot install linux on the mac: tryied everything but nothing works.(virtualbox is not a option). have a 16 gb usb drive.
Any work is apreciated. Ty, Loren

[deanjo]

Make sure that your USB stick has a bootable linux image on it then when turning on the mac, with the USB stick in, hold the option key on the keyboard and, select the USB drive and follow through with the installation.

[lolren]

if only that simple. first thing i tryed was that. then was follow by lots of different tries.none workes...none...

[crazycheese]

You have to be very specific, if you want specific answers. Where is the problem happening? What does dmesg say? What distribution were you trying?

[lolren]

i think i tried so far : linuxmint13, linux mint debian edition, pclinuxos, ubuntu(and derivates) AVlinux, and other i dint remember right now. none of them worked. my mac is mid2007 i think, cpu intel core 2 duo 2.16ghz. Since im running lion(i think i will downgrade tommorow ) and refit does not work.Refind works but does not boot. i think i need a cd rom drive.

[lolren]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1329407