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Triple Booting an Intel Mac the Right Way

Posted by timothy on from the use-three-boots dept.

Miah Clayton writes "In the past, installing Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows on an Intel mac meant that you were forced into only having 3 usable partition slots due to the MBR/GPT hybrid limitations. Steven Noonan figured out a way to avoid dealing with the MBR partition limit and have a Linux install that isn't performance-crippled by having a swap file instead of a swap partition."

2 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Here is why. by Miah+Clayton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am not an enthusiast of anything. I like my Mac for a few reasons, but the purpose for triple booting is a sole one: I am a developer. I need the ability to cross develop. And I need to do it on the run, since I am very seldom in a fixed position for more than a few hours. Therefore, I need to use a laptop for most development. This is not an ideal situation, ever. Laptops notoriously have smaller HD sizes, more RAM restrictions, slower processors, and, typically, integrated graphics. With these limits, using VMWare Fusion (which I own and still use for certain things) carries an unacceptable overhead. It also occasionally interprets OpenGL and DirectX improperly, which is not an acceptable scenario as a game developer. The ability to genuinely triple boot allows me to remove the RAM and CPU overhead caused by booting as a guess operating system. It has nothing to do with "Macs are awesome" and everything to do with "I can cross develop every major platform on one machine, and one I can be on the move with"

  2. Re:What is the point? by Alinraz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Assuming you were actually replying to me (not exactly clear based on your quote and what you said), I'd like to answer you.

    First off, I'm not evangelizing anything. I was merely answering the parent poster when he asked about the benefits to purchasing a Mac over a PC. I was describing why it works best for me; I recognize that other people might want/need other things.

    I've just always thought it ironic that I'm so much more productive developing Linux software on OSX than when I used Linux as my primary OS.

    Please use whatever you want to use. I would never dream of suggesting that because a Mac is perfect for what I do, it is perfect for what you do.

    However, I think the main point of my post is valid: why multi-boot? Even what you point out is different hardware running a single OS most of the time.

    As a note, I am all about the right tool for the right job. I run several machines: A Linux fileserver for our home network server, my OSX laptop (often running Win or Linux in a VM) for my day-to-day work, a Linux server for web hosting, a Windows laptop for my wife, a Tivo (Linux again), and a Linux server for my piano. I even have an old desktop that I never turn on that is configured to dual-boot WinME (don't ask) and Linux; but I never actually use the dual-boot on it...I haven't even turned in on in a year.