My guess is you will need to provide a custom kernel parameter during boot. Make sure to give Linux lots of time to finish booting just in case this is happening to CentOS as well. This is due to the Apple hardware/firmware behavior which is very poor. 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. I know a co-worker has been installing Linux Mint on our organization's old Apple laptops for years because it just works. 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 don't recall the specific setting as that was a few years ago. 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. 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. Unfortunately, due to the late release of the 2014 Mac Mini, the required PCI ID to recognize the drive could not be added to the stock image of ESXi 6.0.
#Wow on mac mini 2011 drivers#
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. One caveat that I would like to highlight is for the recent 2014 Mac Mini 7,1 or newer models where the SATA HDD is not automatically detected due to a change in the disk model made by Apple. 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.