Downloading: the latest version of BootX can be downloaded from Benjamin Herrenschmidt's development page. BootX is unmaintained, as it has not worked with new hardware for many years.


It should be noted that BootX became difficult to maintain, and new machines are supported only by yaboot. Owners of Blue & White G3's and later MUST use yaboot, BootX is incompatible with New World Macintosh.

BootX is a graphical bootloader that allows Linux to boot after the Mac OS is running. (quik, on the other hand, is an Open Firmware-based bootloader that runs without Mac OS.) There are two ways to run BootX: as an application or as an extention. Both have the exact same interface.

The only difference between the application and extension is that the extension has a (ResEdit-configurable) timeout value, after which the default OS (which the user defines) is chosen. If Linux is selected, BootX shuts down the Mac OS, loads the Linux kernel into memory, and starts it running. If the Mac OS is selected, BootX simply exits.

A brief description of the settings seen above: