In order to overcome this, Boot Camp uses both systems, and herein lies the difficulty in triple booting. However Windows can only be installed on a machine with a legacy (MBR) based partitioning system.
This is supported by Mac OS X (obviously) and Linux. ( GPT is part of the new Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) standard proposed by Intel as a replacement for the outdated PC BIOS). Intel Macs use the new GPT method to partition drives. The primary problem with installing operating systems on a Mac is the partitioning system. Drivers: Mac OS X naturally comes with drivers newer Linux distributions more-or-less do Windows XP doesn't, hence the need for a drivers disk.Boot: Once the OSs are set up, you need to boot, and the native Mac OS X bootloader can't triple-boot.Note that 64-bit Windows Vista comes with EFI support. There are also limits to the number of partitions (hence no room for a Linux swap partition) the Windows partition must come last and Boot Camp can't deal with a triple-boot system (for future driver upgrades). Linux can use both, but the installation tools don't (currently) deal with this hybrid. Partitions: Intel Macs use GPT (part of EFI) Windows does not use EFI, and uses the older MBR instead of GPT.Drivers ( device drivers for your hardware).Setting up a machine for triple-booting is largely just partitioning the hard drive and installing each OS. If you want to just get on with installing, skip this section and go on to install.
If you don't know how to make a clean back up of your system, you can visit the How To Backup your Mac page.įor detailed Ubuntu installation instructions, check out Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp_Ubuntu. Please note that this procedure can potentally Destroy all data on you machine's hard disk drive, so make a backup first.
This procedure takes 3-4 hours (with broadband downloading), which is mostly Windows & Linux installation.
Therefore if you try this you do so at your own risk. It has been successfully used to setup a MacBook, but is untested on the iMac/mini. This procedure allows you to triple boot Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux.