Quad-boot Unibody MBP

[carlosbutler]

I have just bought a new MBP 15" and am loving it. Graphically speaking its way more advanced than my 24" Alu iMac.

On to the point. I was thinking of installing Ubuntu as well as Windows 7 and Windows XP - hence the quad boot.

The reason for ubuntu was because i am a computer science & AI student and it is quite useful to have a Linux system installed on the machine. Also love all the cool effects.

Windows 7 (i know you can not download it any more, but from my university i can get it as many times as i want (within reason)) and was going to use this through boot camp to use to play games and thats about it.

Then XP was going to be used (again free through the university - so nothing illegal going on) running in parallel to Mac OS X through Virtual Box. This is because i cant seem to find a good SQL, well generally database writing program on Mac OS X and i can get MS Access for free (uni again) so i would be able to write SQL that way. as well as any other program but at the moment cant really think of anything else.

This i guess would require me to:
Use boot camp to install windows 7 ( i havent checked if it is supported or not, but i hope so)
then with virtualBox 'install' ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid
then with virtualBox 'install' XP.

i am not completely sure how virtualbox works, will this run side by side. or just a pop up window...?

i have also thought of using rEFIt, which is what the uni has on all the iMacs and uses a triple boot system (macos, xp and fedora). but it can mess up apparently, and when updating os x it can apparently stop it from working. and i really cant be bothered with having to keep reinstalling everything if it messes up. but it does mean that i can actually have a proper quad boot system and not something running along side.

ideally i would like mac os x, linux and windows 7 to show up at the beginning, and once i have booted into mac os to be able to start up XP. if you are wondering why i am not saying to boot up 7, its because i was under the impression that 7, being installed through bootcamp/rEFIt would not work as well through parallels - again i cant really find anyone who has tried this before, so dont know what to do.

any help much appreciated (thats starting to become a cliché)

 

[acfusion29]

Even though Windows 7 is a very stable beta OS, you would get better performance out of your games under XP or Vista.

 

[be300test]

Even though Windows 7 is a very stable beta OS, you would get better performance out of your games under XP or Vista.

i disagree, windows 7 offers gaming performance almost as fast as xp.

i have thuroughly tested windows 7 with several games and applications and it runs fantastic.

 

[SHADO]

i disagree, windows 7 offers gaming performance almost as fast as xp.

i have thuroughly tested windows 7 with several games and applications and it runs fantastic.

It really depends on your luck. There are many people who will agree with you, and there are many who will disagree. It's still in beta, so sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't. To the OP: I would use Boot Camp for Windows 7 as you said, then use Parallels for XP, then use VMWare Fusion for Ubuntu.

 

[rukus]

it also depends on what you're runnning it on., and what you expect performance-wise

 

[neilhart]

Well dual boot is OSX and BootCamp with another OS (XP is rock solid and my choice). Then running a virtual machine application in OSX allows you to run as many virtual machines as use hard disk space available (I chose VMWare and access BootCamp XP , ubuntu, and debian virtual machines). This is still only dual boot in my book.

I found that going to a 500 GB hard drive was a help.

You might want to investigate Wubi the unbuntu installer for windows. You run the installer from windows and creates a ubuntu directory in the windows disk space and sets up a dual boot choice on the window boot screen. I have done this on PC's but not on my MBP (yet). If this works, you would enjoy the full native boot power of ubuntu on you MBP.

As far a Window 7 is concerned. The Beta OS that is available is going to go away (I think) and I would suggest to not become too invested until after it is released. It (Win7) runs well on some of my machines and has various problems on the others (even to the point that I could not complete the install on an Intel Atom 330 motherboard).

And a reminder to back-up every thing (and verify that you can restore) before making major changes to your system (especially if the system is your production system).

Neil

 

[carlosbutler]

yeah i did in the end back up everything up. i even rang up Apple Care to see what they said about Windows 7 and Bootcamp. they said it was still not officially supported. although i have installed it and it works. thats it though, it works.

some stuff doesnt work (like alcohol 52%) and i still dont see it that interesting looking. ive got sick of vista glass-screen-metal-aero whatever the hell its called. also the only way to boot into 7 is to hold down the alt key, startup disk wont detect that it exists, even though there is an untitled disk partition on the desktop (macos side)

ive installed steam and it was a bit iffy, then again steam itself is a horrid piece of unreliable software. but the games ran perfectly, HL2:EP2 even ran without a glitch at full 1400x900 - highest everything 16x QAA which was nice since i have never been able to do that before.

you arent able to get windows 7 anymore anyways, and to be honest i may end up going to XP. when they finally release 7, i will need to see if i change my mind on the way that i see OS's:

Mac OS X (way higher than anything else)
XP
ubuntu
windows 7 (at the moment - mainly because of things not working)
windows 98
windows 95
windows nt
windows 3.1
vista

i know its an exaggeration, but o well.