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Multi-booting Mac Intel Developer Machines
ytsejam-ppc writes "Ross Carlson over at Jasbone.com has a great article up on how to install multiple operating systems on the new Intel based developer edition Macs. His particular setup triple-booted Mac OS X 10.4.1 (Intel), CentOS 4 and Windows XP. Just makes me drool."
And how many of us have these developer machines?
What that? Zero . . ah ok . . .
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Given these aren't production machines, this does not mean too much, especially given that these have a BIOS. There have been many suggestions that production Intel based Macs won't be using the BIOS.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...and this is easy since the Developer Transition Platform is just running a generic Intel motherboard, generic Intel video chipset, an Intel Pentium 4 660 processor with HT, and a standard Intel BIOS (NOT a Phoenix BIOS as has been incorrectly reported elsewhere), but what will really be great is when someone makes a Virtual PC- or vmware-like product (perhaps even one of those products themselves) that is a virtual machine that runs under Mac OS X that allows running essentially any x86 OS at near-full speed, side by side with Mac OS X, without having to reboot.
Since it will be running on x86 hardware, processor instructions do not have to be emulated: they can run natively at near-full speed of the underlying hardware.
Further, though Apple will do nothing to stop users from installing Windows on production Intel-based Macintosh systems, it's likely that the production systems will evolve beyond the generic hardware that makes the Developer Transition Platform. Apple itself has said, "Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product." This means there may be additional specialized hardware for which Windows drivers and specialized support profiles will not be maintained by Apple. Of course, this isn't stopping anyone from making them, and Intel has said that Intel-based Macs will use commodity Intel processors, chipsets, and other support components, but it might not be quite as seamless as just popping in a Windows CD and installing (though it very well could be).
Let's also not forget that the production machines may not be - and likely will not be - using BIOS, rendering useless any such conventional PC multi-boot configurations. (But even with EFI or Open Firmware, there's no reason Apple couldn't maintain a robust multi-boot system.)
The point is that a virtual machine product could offer a supported configuration for x86 OSes, including Windows, Linux variants, etc., without the headache and hassle of rebooting into another OS. Sure, dual/multi-booting has benefits, and certainly this will be possible on even the production hardware, but most users would likely prefer a Virtual PC-like environment for running x86 OSes/applications without rebooting.
On this topic, one wonders if Microsoft will be the entity that releases this first. After all, they've already got Virtual PC for Mac, and Virtual PC for Windows (and Microsoft Virtual Server) is exactly this type of virtual machine product, albeit for Windows. On one hand, you can argue that for Microsoft, it's just another copy of Windows sold, so why should they care? But on the other hand, if they make a first-class VM product for Mac OS X that runs Windows (and other x86 OSes) seamlessly at near-full speed of the native hardware, it definitely assists in the sales of more machines designed primarily to run Mac OS X, which could be a poor strategic choice...
But even if Microsoft doesn't do it, let's hope someone like EMC does with vmware.
For more general information, see http://appleintelfaq.com/.
For our next /. story we'll be demonstrating how to install debian on a PC running in a country where the only available electrical power is at 230V.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
OS X is closed source. This means that it is the work of the devil - its purpose is to make the end users eat babies.
Linux is the only free OS. Yes the BSD lincenses may appear more free, but as they have no restrictions, they are actually less free than the GPL. You see, restricting the end user more actually makes them more free than not putting restrictions on them. You must be a dumb luser for not understanding this.
And you obviously dont have a real job. A real job involves being a student or professional academic. You see, academics are the ones who know all about productivity - if you work for a commercial organisation you obviously do not know anything about computers. Usability is stupid. Whats wrong with the command line? If you cant use the command line then you shouldnt be using a computer. vi should be the standard word processor - you are such a luser if you want to use Word. Installing software should have to involve recompiling the kernel of the OS. If you dont know how to do this, you are a stupid luser who should RTFM. Or go to a Linux irc channel or newsgroup. After all, they are soooo friendly. If you dont know how the latest 2.6 kernel scheduling algorithm works then they will tell you to stop wasting their time, but they really are quite supportive.
Oh, and M$ is just as evil as Apple. Take LookOUT for instance. You could just as easily use Eudora. Who needs groupware anyway, a simple email client should be all we use (thats all we use as academics, why cant businesses be any different).
And trend setters - Linux is the trend setter. It may appear KDE is a ripoff from XP, but thats because M$ stole the KDE code. We all know they have GPL'ed code hidden in there somewhere (but not the things that dont work, only the things that work could possibly have GPL'ed code in it).
And Apple is the suxor because they charge people for their product. We all know that its a much better business model to give all your products away for free. If you charge for anything, then you are allied with M$ and will burn in hell.
see... unrelated news: see...
What about 64-bit chips? These Pentium 4-based Macs are 32-bit, I was hoping Apple would be heading in the direction of 64-bit like they started to do with G5. Are they going to use Xeon chips in the high end machines, perhaps?
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
If it's an Intel box, it should be able to run BeOS as well. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There's no reason to believe it won't.
See my post here for more details. At the very, very least it could run Linux and Windows nicely in a virtual machine environment, but it's very likely that yes, they will run Linux - and Windows - regardless of whether the final machines utilize BIOS, Open Firmware, or EFI. Why wouldn't they? Especially in the case of Linux. PowerPC Macs run several varieties of Linux today; why wouldn't they also be able to run on production Intel-based Macs, even if they make the surprising decision of using Open Firmware? And there's no reason Apple would want to *prevent* people from installing Linux, or even Windows, as Phil Schiller himself has said Apple won't do anything to preclude people from installing Windows on Intel-based Macs.
This is a huge coup for Apple: imagine a laptop that can seamlessly run Windows XP and Linux - PLUS Mac OS X. Or better yet, run one environment (such as Mac OS X) and have your other environments in a VM at essentially full speed. It would be a dream machine, to be sure.
Jeebus, this is a no-brainer. Obviously windows... the OSX code is all running under rosetta, unless someone has a nifty CS3 beta or something lying around. What would be more interesting is if someone who writes a cross platform win/mac software could test speed of their app across the two platforms after compiling for intel on OSX...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
...they likely won't be using BIOS.
But if they're using EFI (a distinct possibility), it's still likely that Windows will be able to be directly installed.
And even if they make the unlikely choice of Open Firmware, that doesn't stop Windows (and any other x86 OS) from running at essentially the full speed of the native underlying hardware in a virtual machine environment that someone is bound to produce. In fact, that's likely even *more* desirable to a larger number of people than the hassle of dual booting. And a VM is possible regardless of what the boot mechanism will be.
It makes you drool..
LOL, I cant wait for the first round of (serious) posts that think Macs are better than PCs because they run Windows XP.
Zealots are too much.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No see that would at least make sense... ... the perfect choice for your nextgen desktop and laptops...
You know, go with the Pentium4
The fact that any sane person rather see a PentiumM over a 4 doesn't stop Apple from their random rampage into techtown...
If I wanted a p4 box I'd buy a p4 box and throw Gentoo on it and avoid the whole "pay Steve money" issue... oh wait, that's what I did...
Huh?
Word on the street says Apple's Intel-powered machines will use Pentium M based CPUs, not Pentium 4.
Intel has stated several times that Pentium 4 doesn't have a whole lot of life left in it, and their roadmaps show enhanced and muli-core Pentium M systems as the future. Plus of all of the Intel benefits Steve Jobs mentioned, most don't even apply to the Pentium 4 (performance per watt, bright future, etc).
I don't know why Apple is using the P4 for their developer systems, maybe because their Intel builds for the past 3 years used P4 rather than P3, Athlon, or PentiumM.
By Ross Carlson and Joel Wampler
Quick Guide | Full Guide | Install OS X | Install Windows XP | Install CentOS Linux | Drivers
In this guide we'll take you through installing multiple operating systems on the Intel based Developer Macintosh machine. This guide was put together by Ross Carlson and Joel Wampler to hopefully get you through building a machine that can run every major operating system currently available. This guide takes about 2 hours total. Let's get started...
First there are a few things that you'll need:
Notes:
Quick Guide: - Return to Top
If you're like us and hate reading through pages of crap to get things done here is the quick version of what you'll need to do. We'll explain this step-by-step down below.
The GIMP sucks. If you're a true graphic designer, you'll soon realize things you NEED that are only available in Photoshop.
Obviously as developer platforms, these boxes bear no real similarity to the Intel based macs that will eventually go into production, but I'm hopeful that the ability to boot Windows on Intel macs may remain even through to production hardware. Obviously there may be issues regarding whatever bios-replacement Apple chooses to use on their hardware, but I'm sure they're also aware of the potential for dual booting macs between Windows and OS X. Whether this is something they want to embrace with their new platform (and I seem to recall Phil Schiller stating that there was no reason Windows couldn't run on an x86 mac) or whether it's something that they consider would 'taint' the Macintosh user experience remains to be seen.
This boot setup must be a dream for some people out there with a gaming rush who would love to be able to get the best of both worlds (although the mac mini has its logical place here) . I only hope this flexibility doesn't get wiped out in production hardware..
Business Voyeur
per the article: Other Device: There is also one of the Trusted Computing chips on the board - Windows Update will install the driver for that... sse3 and tpm are the reasons that mac os x/x86 will not run on anything other than apple devkits right now. apple's ATSServer is not compiled for i386 - with good reason: so that the 'rosetta' ppc translator is required. oah750 is 'rosetta', which has hooks to run correctly only through the presence of said TPM. executing ppc binaries manually results in a segfault. no tpm, no rosetta, no mac os x.
Just because it's open source doesn't make it better. I found Photoshop easy to use and powerful from the first version I worked on, 2.5 I believe. I've tinkering with Gimp and it's interesting but I'd hate to have to depend on it. My productivity would drop like a rock and most of what I depend on in Photoshop just isn't there. There's nothing wrong with Gimp if you're just tinkering for fun but it's not a serious threat for Photoshop in the pro world.
Also, as a side note- I received a call a couple of days ago from a woman in the Developer Connection group (I love those Irish accents, rowr :-)...but the accent wasn't enough for me to say yes to leasing the intel developer machine.
"Have you heard about our offer for development systems to ADC Select members?"
"Yep." Who hasn't? People under rocks? :-)
"Are you interested in taking advantage of the offer?"
"Nope, sorry."
Question is, why are they having to do this? Is reception to the development system lukewarm? Did they make a whole bunch, and are just being aggressive about getting 'em out to people? (which would be a good idea). I guess $1k isn't bad at all if you're a serious developer (I'm not).
Please help metamoderate.
That particlar torrent is bundled with a trojan.
Both remaining BeOS users report positive results installing BeOS on these machines.
Keep in mind that Rosetta isn't a PPC emulator. It re-compiles PPC code to x86 code, and it can also recompile at runtime when it spots certain usage patterns. The upshot is, that Rosetta can in many cases end up producing better than 1:1 speed for PPC apps.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, wait, you're not even close to being right.
First of all, Microsoft gets no revenue from every Mac sold. Because exactly zero Macs come with Office. They come with a *trial* of Office. Customers must still purchase it separately.
Second, a comparatively small number of people (mostly concentrated in business and institutional settings) will be the only people running Windows under virtualization. Some new customers will be added because of the speed, and perhaps some new-to-Mac customers because they can run Windows in addition to Mac OS X.
Third, people buy Macs because they want the Mac OS. Not because they secretly want to run Windows on Apple hardware. They're using or switching to Mac OS X because Windows is the steaming pile of dogshit that it is. Running Windows is only a necessity to run Windows software (and having access to the wide variety of commodity PC hardware). I'm not sure many people run Windows because it's the most stable, secure OS available. Not to mention that people who run Windows on an Intel-based Mac will likely be NOT dual-booting, but rather running it in virtualization, side by side with Mac OS X, and only doing it when they need to run Windows-specific software.
Lastly, your assertion that Apple would stop supporting Mac OS X is nothing short of hilarious. I don't even know how to respond to it. Apple might not be a "software company", but Mac OS X is entirely what draws people to the Mac platform. The fact that the hardware is excellently engineered is incidental. Further, if ANYTHING will transform Apple into a "software company", propelling Mac OS X into the larger world beyond Apple hardware when appropriate, it's this transition. In other words, the exact opposite of what you said.
In fact, the actual scenario is more or less the opposite of your entire post. But it was good entertainment!
It is really odd that Apple is now in a position to leverage.... Windows XP to break into a larger market. Think about that for a second.
Believe it or not, there are tons of people out there with more than enough money to buy just about any kind of computer they want. Paying 2%0 more or even 80% more than the cheapest available comparable system is no biggie for these people.
What they do want tho is a system that they know will work for them. Many, many people are afraid of the big switch to PPC Mac OSX because they don't know if OS X will work for them, and if it doesn't, the hardware is basically useless for them (i.e. they aren't going to install Linux and be happy with it).
With the new Intel machines, these people can now buy apple gear knowing that they can go back to XP if need be. I'd bet that a big majority of these people never get around to even installing XP.
I don't really see how those are related, but for what it's worth, I'm vegetarian, and I still think GIMP is Photoshop's bitch.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
"Apple offers the state of the art operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard with all Intel Mac models. Your Mac is also capable booting into other operating system offer by third party. Options include Linux operating system, a brother of OS X which truely favour by your Geek brother. If desired, choose a crappy Microsoft Windows VISTA Operating System. (Which Stand for Virus, Infection, Spam, Trojan and Adware)"
;-)
Okay that just for fun.
I've owned computers for 25 years now. I've been through eight bit machines, UNIX machines at Uni, 16 bit Amigas and 32 bit Acorn/ARM machines. I bought my first PC in 1995 and that was because, by then Linux had become useable enough for me. Eventually I also put Windows 95 on that machine. That machine is still around. Like the preverbial axe it has had all of its bits replaced a few times but is still the same machine. It now runs Linux and Windows XP except that it's been hardly touched in the last few months. Why? Because I use an old Mac G3 instead.
I used Macs at work between '88 and '93. I liked the hardware but thought it was expensive. Thought the software was okay but a little slow and sometimes unstable. So if someone bought one for me, I'd use it but otherwise I'd use something else. (RISC OS in the early 90s, then Linux/Windows).
I dislike Windows for many useablity reasons (I'm not an evangelist and will use something if it does the job) and I dislike Linux because it's not finished. Open source coders seem to lose interest once you've got a 90% complete product or application. They either prefer to refactor or add functionality rather than fixing those remaining bugs. I spend all my time at work being techy and I don't want to do it at home. I just want a machine I can use.
So when Apple anounced OS-X a couple of years or so ago I was interested. A UNIX foundation with Apple's useabilty on the top. But again the costs ruled one out. Not that long ago I got word of the availability of a cheap, second hand, Mac G3 so I bought it. Since I've had it it's done everything I need my home workhorse to do and the PC has not been touched. It may be a tad slow but I'm not worried about games as I use consoles for those (I decided a few years ago that I couldn't afford to keep a PC up to spec enough to play the latest games and so it was cheaper to pay the console premium on games and buy a Playstation 2).
I've just bought myself an iBook as I feel happiest using OS-X. I'm not worried whether it's PowerPC or x86 as in the end that's just one component in many and the machine runs the same software. I've grown up and no longer care whether my machine has the latest Hibachi 10Ghz processor, just whether it fulfil's my needs.
So the new machines will have an Intel processor in. So what? It doesn't mean I will put Windows on. I bought a Mac to get away from Windows. Apple will not stop producing OS-X because people don't just buy their hardware for the hardware, they buy a user experience and that requires OS-X.
If I want Office, I can get it for Mac (Actually I use OpenOffice/NeoOffice when I need such an application). I don't need Windows for anything. I have everything on my Mac. The only thing I use my PC for now is Linux development and the one thing that an Intel Mac would give me is the ability to do away with my PC.
You have an assumption that you cannot do without Windows and people want windows. You're wrong and I feel that actually what will happen is the complete reverse of what you describe.