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."

Comments

Yes

[OverlordQ]

And how many of us have these developer machines?

What that? Zero . . ah ok . . .

Re:Yes

[daveschroeder]

And yet, people have them.

Further, by the end of 2007, all Macs will be Intel based (according to Apple's initial statement).

So people might care to see what types of things may, and likely will, be possible.

Especially people who might want to buy *one* machine, say, a laptop, and run Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and other x86 OSes on it, all at native speeds. And yes, one way or another, this will likely be trivially possible. See my other posts for more information.

In other words, this is very interesting to that group of people. Which, among slashdot readers, is probably quite a lot.

This is nice...

[daveschroeder]

...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/.

Summary of instructions

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Make some partitions. Put the OS of your choice on each partition.

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.

The benefits are obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:But will it run Linux...

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:now for the real question

[rsborg]

Which OS runs phtoshop faster?

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...

Yes...

[daveschroeder]

...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.

The article (in case it goes away)

[Anonymous Coward]

July 21, 2005 Multibooting Intel based Macs - A Step-by-step How to Guide Disclaimer: We have read the NDA from Apple and do not see that this violates it. If we are wrong however someone please let us know and we'll happily remove the following. It is NOT or intention to violate this NDA or to make anyone upset. We are only trying to help others in the community by benefiting from the work we have done

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:

• Decide what OSes you'll install
• Mac OS X Intel disk (the one that came with the Intel Mac)
• Windows XP SP2 CD (if you want XP - we tested with a already SP2'ed disc)
• Windows XP CD Key (obviously, just being safe...)
• CentOS 4 CD's (or your favorite distro - we got kernel panic's every time we tried Fedora Core 4 and CentOS worked great)
• CD Ejection Device (otherwise known as a paper clip - just in case...)

Notes:

• You're going to need a Linux install so you can use it's boot loader for your OS selection menu.
• We had major issues with Fedora Core 4. At first we thought it was an issue with HyperThreading support, and we did a "linux ht=off" at boot. This worked once but never again?!? Joel was also too lazy to make some Slackware CD's with SATA support so we just went with CentOS since we had it handy.
• Keep the CD Ejection Device handy - Apple thought it was a good idea to remove the button from the DVD drive so the only way to eject a disc if you need to is with the OS or the CD Ejection Device. So if you can't boot into an OS and you want to remove the CD you'll need that...

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.

• Boot from the Mac OS X Install DVD
• Use the Disk Utility within the Installer to delete ALL partitions
• Use the drop down and select 3 partitions (if you're doing OSX/Windows/Linux) - YOU REALLY ONLY NEED A MAX OF 3!
• Change the size of the partitions as you desire (make sure to leave room for all your OSes)
• Set the first and third partition to "free space" - DO NOT FORMAT THEM!
• Set the second partition to Mac Journeled - name it "OS X" (or what you want)
• Write the partiton table
• Exit the Disk Utility
• Install OS X on the partition you created above (if you have more than 1 disk you did something wrong!)
• Once OS X is installed and working put in the Windows XP CD and reboot
• At boot make sure to hit a key so the machine boots from the XP CD
• Create an NTFS partition on the first empty partition - you'll see the other two - ignore them. The partition you'll create will be called "E:", don't worry...
• Exit the XP installer (AFTER you've created the partition - DO NOT proceed with setup).
• Restart XP Setup (remember to press enter on reboot)
• Now the first partition will be called C: - in

tpm: say hello to my little friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:torrent link for eveyone else

[archer75]

That particlar torrent is bundled with a trojan.