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Anyone Here Triple-Booting on New MBP?

Tokiopop

Tokiopop

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 6, 2008
1,556
0
West Yorkshire, UK
Well, my MacBook Pro arrives in a few days and I wanting to triple-boot OSX, XP and Ubuntu. It's got a 500GB hard drive so I'm wanting to split the partitions up into 250GB, 200GB, and 50GB. I need to have all 3 on the same computer.

I'm following this short tutorial:
# Make sure you use Leopard and have it updated (10.5.2).
#

Start BootCamp and create a partition for Windows XP (15G is enough).
# Don't install it through Bootcamp.
# Insert Windows CD and reboot holding C when you hear the beeping sound.
# Windows installation should start, follow the usual installation process of Windows.
# If it reboots during installation, you press ALT during reboot so that you can pick Windows installation.
# After Windows is installed, insert your Leopard DVD and it should install all your Apple drivers and stuff.
# Update your Apple Software (there will be an option on the start menu to do so).
# Update Windows XP.
# Now that Windows is installed, get back to MacOS, we are going to install Linux now.
# Start Disk Utility and create a new partition on Machintosh HD, name it Linux
# Insert Linux CD and reboot holding C
# On Linux installation, delete the partition you created (Linux) because its HFS, and set it as ext3 and mount /. Don't create swap (I know its going to warn you, but ignore it).
# At the last step of setup, click advanced because you need to change where GRUB is going to be installed, choose sdaX (which X is your Linux partition).
# Let it install Ubuntu.
# Get back to MacOS, install rEFIt, reboot and run the partition manager of rEFIt, which should take care of every detail of booting for each OS.
#

If XP was installed before the partition change, it will need boot.ini to be edited to change its partition from 3 to 4.
# Reboot and that's it.
Click to expand...

Has anyone else done this? And is there an easier way? What problems have those of you that did this run into?

Thanks :)

Edit: I found the tutorial here. If I were to do all of this successfully, what would happen if I updated to Snow Leopard?
 
I didn't go that route for native booting, but sounds interesting

I have Vista installed through Boot Camp
And I have Windows 7 64 RC in a Fusion VM
And I have Ubuntu in a Fusion VM as well

Installed easily and flawlessly for all installs (except POS Vista)
I will remove Vista when Windows 7 comes out

Good luck and let us know how it works out for you

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
What's the difference between booting it natively and booting it via bootcamp!?

I have found bootcamp to be bad. The touchpad is not working that well (it always thinks left clicks are right clicks) and the performance is not as good as on my 2.4 ghz Dell (I have a 3.06 Ghz MBP; all the other specs are similar).

If I turn aero on in bootcamp, the whole computer slows down to a crawl. It is ok when it is off, but I would like to have it on and work well.

I am going to try this right now.

When you say "C" do you mean "command"? I though you choose "option/alt" to choose your disk.
 
NovemberWhiskey said:
What's the difference between booting it natively and booting it via bootcamp!?

<snip>

When you say "C" do you mean "command"? I though you choose "option/alt" to choose your disk.
Click to expand...

Booting natively is booting through Boot Camp
My comments were about using a VM instead of Boot Camp

Holding the "C" key boots through the CD/DVD drive directly without choosing I believe

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
I run 2 Virtuals (XP/CentOS) simultaneously and they are all great together. Never done the native trio, though - just duo once with OSX/XP which was fine but I preferred the virtual scenario instead. Virtuals are (or seem to me) more fluid as far as hardware translation goes and as long as you have enough memory you really don't suffer any losses in performance.
All in all it's how you intend to use it, I suppose...
 
MacDawg said:
Booting natively is booting through Boot Camp
My comments were about using a VM instead of Boot Camp

Holding the "C" key boots through the CD/DVD drive directly without choosing I believe

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
Click to expand...

His post describes installing Windows (NOT) through bootcamp. Is this any different than a bootcamp installation?
 
Bootcamp merely provides drivers for Windows and is a partitioning utility...it doesn't really "boot" anything.

If you put in a Windows installation CD, and hold Option during the Apple "zing", you will see that you can run the installation for Windows.
 
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