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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."

21 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Performance Crippled? by Foolhardy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was under the impression that modern Linux kernels had negligible performance impact from using a swap file as opposed to a dedicated swap partition.

    Personally, I much prefer using a swap file because it gives me more flexibility in locating, resizing and moving swap.

    1. Re:Performance Crippled? by Hatta · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Quite true. Along that line, who uses physical partitions on a disk for linux installs anymore? Make yourself one physical linux partition, and use LVM to get all the volumes you need. You can even make yourself a swap partition under LVM if you want.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. Re:Performance Crippled? by Sockatume · · Score: 3

      To elaborate on that, the advantage of putting the swap on a seperate disk is that your main HDD can be dealing with real apps and data while the secondary swap disk is working away paging things into and out of RAM, giving a performance boost. Using a swap partition on the same drive as the OS makes absolutely no sense.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:Performance Crippled? by sam0737 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      With 4GB of RAM...My box could hardly use Swap. Or put it in another way, when it does use the swap space, it's slow like hell!

      The 'free' command tell me that most of my ram goes to caching, but I very seldom encounter the case that I need more than 4G.

      When the time comes that I need more than 4G, I would just go out to buy more ram! Paging to the harddisk is far too slow...

    4. Re:Performance Crippled? by Ant+P. · · Score: 5, Funny

      I don't have a separate drive to spare on my laptop for swap space, luckily I found a workaround for that by putting the swap on a ramdisk

  2. GPT partitions by c_g_hills · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since Windows even now only recognizes the Master Boot Record (MBR) format

    This is untrue. 64bit versions of Windows support GPT, as do versions newer than Vista.

    Also, I don't have a problem using a swapfile. I see no performance difference at all.

    1. Re:GPT partitions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Windows Server 2008 most likely.

      Vista is old :)
      Server 2003 is in midlife crisis
      XP is ancient
      2000 is lore of years past...

      or something along those lines...

  3. Re:buy a pc by Doctor_Jest · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ballmer, is that you again? Stop it, or we'll cut off your coffee allowance again and lock you in the special place. I mean it this time...

    --
    It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
  4. What is the point? by CannonballHead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux? It seems to be that Linux and OS X are redundant, not to mention that most things you can run on OS X can be run on Windows as well... why buy the Apple hardware?

    The only reason I can think of is the image of the Mac, honestly. If there were major redeeming qualities of OS X (especially as compared to Linux?), I could understand that as well, but I am not aware of them (granted, I don't use Macs much, but if you're going to install a Unix based OS, Linux, in addition to a Unix based OS, Mac OS... hm!).

    Or am I missing something - i.e., Apple hardware actually is that much better to warrant a higher price tag? Back when they were using RISC based processors, I would readily believe that there might be a difference... but now that even the CPU architecture is the same (Intel...) ... ?

    1. Re:What is the point? by Alinraz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree with your: "what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux?" But for totally different reasons.

      I ask: why would you bother with even a double boot, let alone a triple boot? There is nothing you can't do with a Mac, in OSX alone, that you can do with any other OS.

      First, hardware: Apple hardware is clean, reliable, with features that are difficult to find in combination on other systems. Apple hardware works; and when it doesn't they fix it. You don't have to keep fussing with it like you do if you build a machine from scratch. And its price is comparable to similarly equipped PC equipment (there was a recent post here on /. about that specifically). Yes, you can buy a PC for less... but that misses the point doesn't it?

      As for the OS: OSX is like running Linux in many ways. It is solid, never breaks, it performs well, doesn't have virus and worm issues: basically everything that Windows isn't.

      It is based on BSD, and has gcc and other open source tools. It has ssh, bash, tcsh, and X. You can build and run nearly any open-source application or tool.

      What OSX is missing from Linux: fiddlyness. While running a Linux distribution feels good, at the same time it's a fair amount of work. Need to get a new piece of hardware working: compile a new kernel module, add that, and muck with configuration files in /etc. And if you're unlucky, possibly have to muck with device nodes in /dev or monkey around with udev configurations. And that's just one example. Every time you want to add or change something it's rinse and repeat time. Oh and forget Linux on laptops... it's famous for having spotty laptop hardware support.

      But really the question is "why multi-boot"? With VMWare Fusion on the Mac, I really don't know. Just run Windows applications side-by-side with your Mac ones in OSX. Run an entire Linux development server in a virtual box. When you need to compare configurations, clone the sucker and try out a different one. When your Windows VM starts to get a polluted registry, slows down and starts to eat itself, delete and reinstall it...while compiling the Linux kernel in a Linux VM, while writing a software certification test proposal in OpenOffice running directly in OSX. No lost productivity simply because you have to reinstall Windows.

      The real question here is not "Mac vs Linux vs Windows?", it's "why are you still multi-booting?"

    2. Re:What is the point? by Chrononium · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sadly, since we are dealing with the world of computing, things do change, especially for the Mac in the times since those articles were written. The ARS report was benchmarking an emulated version of Photoshop (that's what "Rosetta" does). Fast forward to today, we already have Photoshop CS3 (Mac Pro's do beat the G5's) and there's also CS4. According to one benchmarking source, Photoshop CS3 did do slightly better with the 8 core Mac Pro versus the 4 core (although I would agree that the difference is so small that it could be within measurement error).

    3. Re:What is the point? by bogie · · Score: 2

      Seriously? You can't think of any advantages? Then I guess I'd suggest that OS X isn't for you.

      But if you want my opinion, and what else is the point of the internet, then when comparing OS X vs Linux the only thing I can say is that for modern desktop computing OS X does just about everything better than linux. It is simply more polished and easier to use. The apps are more mature and usually easier to use. Plus you get some really first rate commercial apps. Finally since it is *nix you can run whatever OSS you want on it. It really is the best of both worlds. Why do you think so many of the longtime linux users and developers moved to OS X? It's not because they were dying to fork out extra money to Apple.

      For people willing to put in the in extra time and live with the known drawbacks Linux has always been a viable alternative on the desktop. And for things like schools, thin clients, embedded, servers, where cost is an issue, etc Linux really does kick all other OS's asses. But it has a ways to go before it can match what you get with OS X on the desktop.

      --
      If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
    4. Re:What is the point? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux?

      We choose to triple-boot a Mac in this decade and hack the other things, not because it is practical, but because it is fun.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    5. Re:What is the point? by lupis42 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      From gblackwo (1087063):

      There are arguably different pros and cons to all three operating systems

      You say there is no need to multi-boot because OSX does everything perfectly. I submit that OSX does nothing perfectly, but everything well, which makes it useless to me. I have many devices, each for one thing, and OSX doesn't do any of those things better than the alternatives. Why use it?
      Ubuntu Netbook remix is much nicer on the ultra-portable than OSX or Windows, 64 bit Windows is required on the gaming machine, and Linux+XBMC does for the mediaboxen quite well. Macs were never an option there, because the one piece of hardware that has component and TOSLINK out in a small form-factor with no adapters or messy cables, the Apple TV, has no DVD drive and does not allow me to easily put stuff on it (where stuff includes zsnes & and a controller, a DVD drive, and support for all of the stuff I have that's not in a format Apple accepts).

      I wasn't intending to attack OSX here, just to attack the evangelism in the parent suggestion that we should all use X because it does what he needs, and we obviously need the same things. Everyone wants different things from their computers, and there is no single solution that will ever satisfy them all.

    6. Re:What is the point? by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The iMac really is a beautiful piece of hardware, leaving OS aside. I have an "old" white one (dual core intel, just with the older white case before the all-aluminium ones came out) and I love the damn thing.

      I can carry it around easily when I need to go somewhere (it packs up neatly even for transatlantic flights) and if I want to move it between home and a friend's house it takes about 2 minutes to unplug it and the KB/mouse and pack it back into the box it came in, which has a big carry handle on the top so I can carry it like a suitcase.

      The screen is beautiful (despite lots of wank on /. recently about how 'apple imac screens are shit!', I find it looks very nice, and the all-in-one design works well for me.

      It won;t suit you if you want to be able to replace every last single transistor with one you bought from a white box store, but you can change the memory on your own, and with a service manual (ie, if you're competent enough to build your own whitebox PC, then you can take apart an iMac) and change the HD, optical drive etc. In my opinion, the 3 year apple care is well worth the cost - so if any of the "non-standard" bits go wrong, which on an iMac is the logic board, it'll be repaired.

      So, I can't upgrade the graphics card or the CPU, but then, I don't really need to - it's not supposed to be a bleeding edge games machine that would require that. It works for me as a Final Cut Studio work station and my home machine, with some WoW, EvE, Quake 4, UT2K4 thrown in - all of which play very well.

      I can dual boot it if I want, and while I don't have Windows on mine personally, I do support a friend's office machines - he recently replaced all the Dell boxes he had with iMacs after seeing mine, and they run Windows exclusively for his business needs.

      As for two Unix based OSes, well that's up to you. While there is an excellent set of open source tools and software available on OS X from the community at large (like Darwin Ports, and pretty much any app you can run in Linux you can build and run in OS X), there are just some times where you want to be doing what other people are doing - I know, for example, that some open source apps just work better on an actual Linux install, rather than on OS X - while it's a Unix OS, it does have its quirks. I could fully understand why a Linux user would want to be able to dual boot.

      So, to get back to point, not even considering the OS that is running on it, Apple hardware is worth it for me. In my experience, it is built well, looks good, is well featured (firewire, gigabit ethernet etc) and has some genuine advantages in form and design over a traditional PC that make up for the disadvantages like lack of GPU changeability etc.

      It may not be for you though - if you want a fully expandable tower Mac, then you're looking at a Mac Pro, which really are expensive. In the consumer end though, if you want a working machine with a lot going for it, then the iMac, Macbook and Macbook Pro are three of the best Windows, OS X and Linux machines you can buy right now.

    7. 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.

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

      For "using Linux seriously": Um, well... about 5 minutes ago. I've got a current release of Fedora running in a VM that I installed a few weeks ago.

      I use it every day. I write both kernel-level and application level software for it every day. Yet I find I need to spend lots more time configuring and maintaining Linux than I do OSX. That's me. YMMV.

    9. Re:What is the point? by lupis42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      But if you want my opinion, and what else is the point of the internet

      Is the internet no longer for porn?

  5. 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"

  6. Re:if you're going to... by Miah+Clayton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In my case, I rather enjoy keeping my nose clean. You can't have Mac OS X on a Dell without breaking the TOU, and most likely not without warezing it.

  7. Not Performance Crippled by Taxman415a · · Score: 3, Informative

    Indeed it's been a long time since that wasn't the case. Since the 2.6 Kernel came out basically. Here's the lkml thread on it. http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/6/29/11 and http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/7/7/326 are the two posts. The latter is more informative, the former is definitive and clearly shows Andrew Morton is the one saying that part too. This is from 2005 folks. Someone notify the submitter. That is of course unless you don't trust Andrew Morton to know what he is talking about. And just because this comes up every once in a while, googling for linux swap file performance finds that post easily.