Saturday, November 3, 2007

Installing Windows, Ubuntu7.10, Mac OS 10.4.10 on MacBook (Triple Boot)


I am happy with my MacBook with its running Mac OS X 10.4.10. I can't stand working on windows any more, I feel more comfortable with Mac OS.

My master Thesis is running on linux environment(basically Fedora, but I successfully turned it to be Ubuntu)
My current project delivery should be done on windows. An easy solution costing 60$ would be to purchase Fusion.
Although Fusion looks very interesting, I didn't submit to this solution, for the following reasons:
  1. Running virtual machines consumes more memory, in this case I will loose some performance which is something I will certainly need during development.
  2. More memory usage, means more power consumptions, hence less battery life time. in normal cases I enjoy having ~4hrs battery life time with my lovely Mac. this is sthg i don't stand to loose.
  3. to overcome the first problem, I can extend my RAM. this will make the virtual software costs me almost (60+90)$....I really can't afford this for now. (I didn't get paid for salary 3 months ago)
So, I decided to to create a triple boot on my MacBook. It was a very risky step for me..But here we go, I have nothing to loose anyway (keeping in mind 150$ :S, 900 LE when converted to our local currency!!!!!! )

My MAC specs are:
Processor: 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
MAC OS X: 10.4.10

The target is to install Ubuntu 7.10 and WinXP SP2 on MacBook.
steps:
  1. Get BootCamp: I think it may force you to update to Mac 10.5. (luckily I installed it 1 month ago before leopard is released)
  2. Update your Mac OS.
  3. Install rEFIT.
  4. run BootCamp assistant and follow instructions to burn driver CD for windows. (don't proceed with installing steps)
  5. Backup your data. (you may not loose your data if things go smoothly)
  6. Check your disk partitions and identify the Mac Partion. I most cases it is /dev/disk0s2. but if you are not sure, you can verify this by running a shell command using the diskutil:
    $ diskutil list
    resize your HDD using Diskutil by running the following command. first you specify the volume to be resized, and its new size, then the type, and the name of the new volumes followed by their size.
    $ diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s2 70G "Linux" "Linux" 20G "MS-DOS FAT32" "Windows" 20G
  7. insert your XP SP2 CD and hold down the "ALT" key.
  8. install XP on the valid partition, just give it a quick FAT32 format.
  9. you should now have a dual boot(windows with Mac).
  10. insert your Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD.
  11. run the installation normally. You should set up the partition manually. Don't mount the EFI system partition. you need only to mount / to the drive you allocated to your linux installation. I didn't make a SWAP file, I just don't need this for now, I relied on my 1GB RAM.
  12. Continue through the installation steps.
  13. When you reboot, you should have triple boot.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am happy with this post "installing windows.

Regards
Hazel