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Triple Boot on MacBooks Working
MikeTheMan writes "By now, everyone probably heard that Apple's recently-released Boot Camp software allows users to install Windows XP alongside OS X. But now, people at OnMac.net have discovered how to triple-boot OS X, Windows XP, and Linux. There are instructions on the Wiki for getting Gentoo running, but it is probably trivial to get other distros working as well."
Since when is any major OS vendor's security reached through obscurity of its file system ? I would contend NTFS is much like th binary word format, a format that helps microsoft alot more than the people that use it.
BTW apple does not required that the partition be FAT32, it is just more compatible and mountable with other OS's.
I created an NTFS partition no problem. Mac OS X even mounted it for me to read from (I didn't try writing though...)
You really should research what you say before spewing lies.
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Exactly what kind of security is file-system supported on a Macbook? If you're using your Macbook as a multi-user Windows server, using NTFS support of user private data - well, perhaps you should worry less about filesystem insecurity and more about hardware selection. NTFS support of private user data is pretty useless anyway, it's fairly trivial to work around, especially on a windows box.
Perhaps the GP believes that a file system with actual file permissions (such an NTFS) might be more secure than one without (FAT32). True, one still has to get the users to stop running as Administrator.
Unless you are creating file shares on the machine itself going with NTFS is moot. Assuming the user gets physical access to the machine and yanks the drive, it doesn't matter if you are running Fat32 or NTFS. NTFS permissions are trivial, unless you are using EFS encryption in XP, but then you could always use PGP or Truecrypt or any other 3rd party encryption.
Apple doesn't "want you to" use fat32. They helpfully suggest using it, as mac os x cannot natively write to an ntfs partition, but it can write to fat32. It's a simple practical consideration, not some conspiracy.
Two words: Path Finder.
Since when is a Intel Mac a $20 thrift store pc. It might be in several years, but I believe the grandparent was asking why someone would want to run Linux on an Intel Mac now.
Not talking about natively booting, but via virtualization, it can run almost anything: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/guest_os/ And that's just the "officially supported" OSes. Yes, yes, old hat to people running Windows or Linux on x86 hardware, but now on a platform with Mac OS X as well.
Sounds a little defensive to me. I think the point of the grandparent is that there's little point in rebooting to get to Linux if you already have an OS X capable computer. A good load of free software works on OSX as UNIX and X11 programs. Last I heard (last year) Linux on a laptop isn't likely to sleep or hybernate well, and doesn't necessarily have good hardware support for features typically found in a laptop. I know a few people that have Linux desktops and servers, but have a Mac laptop because of this.
Linux does have plenty of value for the reasons you state.
And I haven't run across an ad for web hosting that offered an OS X server.
They exist, but there's probably not much point in it as OS X server offers admin tools that might not be available in a sub-server instance. An OS X web server would be just like any other UNIX server.
Lets see:
* CHRP was an attempt to replicate PC-Clone economics for PowerPC
* CHRP cratered
* PowerPC became uneconomic
* Apple belatedly switches to PC-Clones
* You claim that Apple PC-Clones are reincarnation of CHRP.
No, that doesn't add up.
(I will agree that Apple will sell a lot of dual-boot boxes, espciallally when they start bundling Windows.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
So if you had a brand spanking new Intel Powerbook why would you need to triple boot it?
That was his actual question.
The answer of course, much like putting linux on an iPod even though the Apple firmware offers better MP3 playback, is becasue you can.
You mean like this?
Do NOT mess with the partitions. Seriously.
Use diskutil's resizeVolume command to create (up to 4) the partitions you need. You cannot have more than 3 "real" partitions on your system (OS X uses #1 for the EFI stuff).
BootCamp works by having an MBR and a GPT partition table simultaneously. There are no partition tools out there that correctly edit both at the same time. Doing it by hand via's OS X's GPT/FDISK tools often fails, as well. I have no idea why.
I'm one of the people who started messing with this triple boot first. Trust me; you don't want to mess with parted or fdisk (in Linux/FreeBSD/whatever). If you do decide to, go to mactel-linux.org, and get the parted patch, and then make sure you use the GPT tool in OS X to create a set of matching MBR/GUID partition tables.
But I promise you; you'll have to wipe your disk if you start messing with these partition tables. Nobody knows the correct way to handle them, yet. More experimentation is needed, and there's a good chance that at any given point in the process you'll corrupt your disk.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
> Assuming the user gets physical access to the machine
Don't be daft, of course it doesn't protect you from users with physical access determined to get your data, no non-encrypted FS does.
NTFS allows you to use non-admin accounts (yes, you CAN do that and get useful work done) with privilege seperation. On FAT, any user can overwrite any file, not so on NTFS. Running as non-admin with NTFS stops most malware dead in its tracks, so it is much safer.
Arguing that NTFS is no safer than FAT because users with physical access can steal you data is like arguing that file permissions on HFS+ are useless and you might as well chmod 777 everything.
That's incorrect. You have to back up your certificate and usually good to go, failing this (and hopefully a bit of forthought) you can recover encrypted volumes through use of a recovery agent. A recovery agent is a user account with a certificate capable of recovering the lost volumes. On workgroups this is the local administrator account. On a domain it's the domain administrator by default. The catch is that before you implement EFS you have to designate the recovery agent. So it's very possible to recover lost data on an ntfs volume. You just have to be smart about it.
Well, I'm a cross platform developer ( OS X and Windows ) and I'd far rather have the separate machines. Dual booting for development is a pain, I still have to do it sometimes for OS 9/OS X for one of our products. When we start Linux development I'm going to buy another machine just for Linux instead of dual booting either my PC or Intel iMac ( or one of my PPC macs for that matter, I guess ). For sure it costs a bit more but the convenience is well worth it in the long run. Being able to run things side by side is a big help. Even if you only have one monitor you can use VNC and/or RDC to interact with all your platforms at the same time. Of course I'm paid for my development work, but I can see your point for hobbyists etc.
Regards,
Jo Meder
Yet hundreds of millions do it every day.
Using secret, closed-source software developed by the file system designers.
What's your point?
NTFS is an overly complex file system, with incomplete documentation. Making small changes to it tends to break it and/or corrupt data.
Furthermore, why not just run NT/2000/XP on Ext2? Use a small FAT32 boot partition, and keep all your data on Ext2.
File system driver here. You can get read/write support on Ext2 on all major operating systems, and Linux will journal Ext2(Ext3 is a transparent upgrade).
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell