Triple Booting - 3 operating systems on one computer

[Candlelight]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro#Easiest%20Triple%20Boot%20(Boot%20Camp)

1. Assuming that OS X is installed, use bootcamp to install Windows XP or Vista. NOTE: MAKE ENOUGH SPACE FOR BOTH WINDOWS AND UBUNTU WITH BOOT CAMP!
2. Install windows normally.
3. Start your computer with the Ubuntu disk in the drive. Install Ubuntu by partitioning the boot camp drive that Windows is located on, and install both Ubuntu and GRUB bootloader onto the new partition. (If you want more compatibility with mac, format to ex2, not ex3. There are programs that allow mac to wright to that)
4. Start the computer and boot back into Mac and install rEFIt. This will allow you to boot into every operating system on boot.

Can anyone tell me if this is genuine before I go ahead and do it?

I should point out I have already run boot camp and Windows has been installed, so am up to step 3.

 

[jgdst]

YOU'RE INSANE, IT CAN'T BE DONE!!!"£!"2


I've never tried three OSes on a Mac using Boot Camp to be honest, but in theory, I wouldn't have thought there was a reason why it wouldn't work. As long as the Ubuntu installation doesn't interfere with OS X (in the same manner Windows is separate), I don't see why it would cause a problem.

I had a quick look through the wiki you found, and the methods all seem sound to me. At worst, if it all goes wrong, you'll have to reinstall OS X and Windows. Just make sure you've got a backup of all your important stuff. Or if you can, try testing it on a bootable external hard drive.

I've managed to install 3 OSes on my Mac using a program called Parallels Desktop and it's worked, although the method is slightly different as it creates guest OSes in a Virtual environment. The upside of that is, you can run all the OSes together, instead of one at a time.

Anyway, just my two pennies. Good luck with it (if you decide to do it )!

 

[Candlelight]

We are a few weeks away from either going with VMware or Parallels, but until then I was just looking into the possibility of using a seperate partition.

I am trying to source a small USB drive and may just build a virtual machine on that for now.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Candlelight]

I was gonna try but aborted it cos I found this:

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-426732.html

Yes, there is a bug that doesn't allow you to use or change to any size other than 32 gigabytes. I'm sure they'll probably fix it in 10.5.2 though. I got my XP on bootcamp working as a 32 gigabyte NTFS partition, and then I tried to install Linux on that same partition as well by giving it 10 gigs to itself, changing the XP partition's size. Linux worked fine, but I was never able to boot into XP again.

I am running 10.5.2 but I don't know if the bug has been fixed, and I don't wanna poke XP just yet.

 

[spinnerlys]

Try the rEFIt boot manager.

I had three systems installed at one time, so maybe it can work.

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

You can even have an installation of whatever OS on an external hard drive.