It turned out that booting Linux from a USB flash drive / USB pen drive / USB stick (or CD for that matter) is nearly impossible without rEFIt or its modern clone, rEFInd. Since OSX hadn’t been booted for some years, I decided to install Linux only. The original 100Mb hard disc was failing and I bought a 500Mb drive to replace it. The white Core duo (without the 2) 32-bit Macbook was purchased in September 2006 and used to dual boot Gentoo Linux and Mac OSX using rEFIt. While this is trivial on most PCs, it turned out not to be on an old Macbook. In order to install Linux on the replacement of a crashed hard-disc drive in a 2006 Macbook Core duo, I wanted to boot Linux from a USB flash drive in order to then install it.
