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."

Comments

MacIntel - CHRP?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

From my perspective, the Macintel computer is the fulfilment of the CHRP dream from the mid-1990s. For those too young to remember, CHRP (pronounced Chirp) was an idea from Apple that stood for Common Hardware Reference Platform. Such a computer would exist outside of Operating Systems - it could and would run anything. It never really got off the ground, for obvious reasons.

I always thought CHRP was a great idea, and it seems to me that the MacIntel platform running bootcamp IS the reincarnation of CHRP. I think that if Apple can run the price of their hardware down enough and incorporate things like card readers etc. into the front panel, they could really increase market share in a big way. For example:

Here's an interesting idea, that could save a company vast sums of cash:

Buy apple hardware, and triple boot the suckers, and wave bye bye to the vast collection of test boxen that clutter the labs.

Granted: specific software that is dependent on specific hardware that doesn't fly with the mac platform won't be testable, but some huge vast percentage of what is out there doesn't operate that way, and this would especially be true of internet based applications.

So, instead of using a old Intel box that's been re-grooved to do Linux (initial cost, say, $1000) and ANOTHER Intel/AMD box for Windows (say, another $1000) and an Apple computer to test the Apple build (say, $1500), you now just buy the MacIntel box, ($1500) and install Windows and Linux and you're done.

This multiboot thing will be especially impressive as Microsoft continues along this idiotic path of multiple flavours of Windows. God ferbid they just make one REALLY GOOD version that does the job properly (a la OSX).

But this Bootcamp thing could save some companies millions of dollars. They could upgrade their labs to Apple computers, run bootcamp, and say bye bye to HP/Dell/Gateway/etc. forever, fulfilling the beautiful vision of CHRP.

Works for me.

RS