I have a late 2015 iMac which I installed Zorin OS on. It is not dual booting and the whole disk has been formatted so there is no trace of Mac OS left on the computer. I would like to dual boot the computer with windows, but I am unable to access the boot menu. I have tried spamming every function key, escape, delete, ect while the computer was booting but have not gotten anywhere. I have tried with other bootable usb's I have but none of them change anything. Is there any way to manually boot into the boot menu or tell zorin to boot from the usb?
If you press the 'OPTION'-key you can select what to boot at the startup of the iMac.
If you want a Windows on it (?????), you'll need to install W first.
If you want a strickt legal computer then select the USB-stick to boot and follow the onscreen instructions for installing Zorin on the Mac.
A Mac has no BIOS ! It is a kind of UEFI-system where, of course, OSX runs fine on it.
Check if your RAM is minimal 4 Gb and that your HDD is an SSD ; there is no point anymore for running Linux on an old HDD-system (mechanical drive I mean). So if that is the case, first buy on a site as AliExpress an SSD of you chosing. Prices go +- 23€ or $ / 500 Gb at this moment of speaking.
If Ram is low buy RAM-banks on AliExpress as well so you'll have an ideal situation of 4 or better 8 Gb of RAM on board.
Built 2015 Late, an iMac should have a great performing processor .... Verify first with a Live session of Zorin if things go really well. GPU is supported and so on.
RAM-slots are accessable at the bottom of the big screen, you'll see there are 2 screws for 2 slots to access. It could be however, that your Mac has 4 slots (2 access, 2 permanent built in). See on YouTube how to open an iMac for upgrading the inner RAM-banks as well. This way you'll have a power-station for Linux at a very low cost.
Remember that Windows is NOT a free operating system, and remember that the EULA is strickt and binding all over the world. Zorin is a GPL-License, so the Core -version is for free and shall always be. Zorin is supported on this Forum, Windows is NOT.
If you have a licence key for Windows that is not an OEM one you would be better installing it as a Virtual Machine inside of Zorin which is what I had to do while working from home to access shared mailbox, first with Feren OS and finally Devuan which is my daily go to. The graphical display in Virt Manager is far superior to Virtual Box but not the solution if you intend to use for gaming. If gaming then look at Steam or Lutris or better still use a games console.
im running zorin os on a fresh windows geo laptop. but would also like to run Batecera also on the same laptop. like i did when on my older windows laptop. At the moment i am not sure how to access the boot menu on Zorin and get it to boot from a newly written SD card. the SD card has the latest Batocera on it and usually if i boot it up on the laptop all the partitions are set up automatically and the SD card is good to go. can you please help.
how to access the boot menu?
How to make Zorin boot from an SD card?
IF your laptop has a BIOS or extended UEFI, you can make the boot selection from there what it is you want to boot up. In my case I have a Dell Latitude E6510 (2009 built) that has a pre-boot option where you can select the first booted hardware. I have to press F12 for that in the boot-splash screen on the startup.
For a Geo I don't know if that option is permitted.
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you're a legend thank you, i restarted and went through every fkey to find it was the escape key that gave me access to the boot menu.
but now i have to figure how to duel boot with Ubuntu as the main system and duel booting Batocera(gaming system used for retro gaming) from a USB or SD card.
the saga continues 
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