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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."
(or whatever other OS might be fashinable, *BSD, ...)
I'm not going to buy a macbook until it can run all the major OSes and emulate Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2 and PS3. And it had to have a cell phone built in, as well as an iPod.
And it has to have an awesome case mod too. Because products are never good the way they are released, we always have to mess with them!
While you guys with macs are looking to boot into windows, I'm looking to boot windows OFF of my laptop.
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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.
some people just don't like OS X or Aqua. To each their own. I personally prefer it. It is well integrated. Finder kinda of sucks, but hey nothing's perfect. At least it's better than windows. and keeps KDE on it's toes. Now if i was running non mac hardware then it's Linux and KDE.
With Apple now shipping x86 computers people are starting to realize that yea Apple hardware really is higher than average PC quality. Apple x86 machines are jumping to the top of the list for performance vs price. Something that Apple Fanatics have been saying for years but no one really believed them.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I, for one, welcome our new triple-booting overlords.
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.
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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.
This is a perfect opportunity for the NetBSD crowd. They're experts at creating an OS that runs very well on very specific machinery. With some effort and direction, they could produce the premiere alternative UNIX for these Mac systems.
We haven't seen a comparably standardized system since the SGI Indy, and that was over a decade ago. This time around the system is far more affordable, too. It'll lower the participation barrier for your average Joe and Jill Developer.
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.
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
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Oh, and cross-platform developpers will naturally be happy. One machine, 3 systems.
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It sounds ideal for cross-platform application development --- you only need one machine, and just need to reboot when porting/compiling to your 'non-primary' platforms. Combine with a decent cross-platform API like wxWidgets for best results. Make it a MacBook and you're portable too, and with all three platforms available to give product demos depending on who you're selling to.
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.
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I'd be interested to know if it is possible to buy a MacIntel without OSX preinstalled.
OSX doesn't fulfill my needs as a primary OS, but the CoreDuo Mac Mini has appeal as a low temperature SFF Linux box. If Apple do reach even half the market share they once had, I wonder if we'll be seeing an increase in demand for the hardware they distribute without the OS tax? Given that Asustek and Quanta make all of the Apple hardware, my next best bet is that Asus simply put out a blank SFF box with the same spec as the Mini.