Re: [orca-list] Bootcamp and Linux?

[Luke Yelavich <themuso ubuntu com>]

On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 09:35:23AM EST, Christopher-Mark Gilland wrote:
> I'm pretty sure the short answer to this question will be
> technically?... yes... The long answer will probably be, yes, and
> no.
>
> Technically speaking, Bootcamp on the mac, is made for either
> Windows Vista, or Windows 7.  Is there a way however that I could
> set up a bootcamp partition on my mac book, then install UBuntu,
> Vinux, or F123 Linux? preferably either the last two of the three.

Yes, it is indeed possible to install Linux onto a separate partition on an intel based mac. In order to do 
so, you first need to resize your OS X partition, to allow for enough space for Linux to fit. Resizing your 
OS X partition is done in Disk utility. Open disk utility, select your hard disk from the list on the left, 
and go into the partitioning tab, and resize in there.

Once you have made some space for Linux, you then need to install it. How you install depends on whether your 
mac hardware has an optical drive. If your mac has an optical drive, then you will have to boot from CD/DVD, 
as macs with optical drives by default do not allow booting Windows/Linux from USB/Firewire. If installing 
Ubuntu, then you need to use a particular version of the Ubuntu install iso. There are 2 versions for amd64, 
amd64, and amd64+mac. You need to use the amd64+mac version, because the original amd64 and the i386 versions 
have boot files for EFI based systems, and these files do not work with Apple's implementation of EFI.

Installing from CD is easy enough, hold down the C key on boot. If installing Ubuntu, then you need only to 
wait till you hear a bongo drum sound. You can then press Control + S to start Orca, and commence installing 
Ubuntu.

One issue that arrises is dual booting Linux and OS X. Apple provides software to allow Windows users to 
choose to boot to OS X on reboot, and OS X allows you to select Windows to boot at next restart, but this is 
not possible for Linux for a couple of reasons:
1. OS X's startup disk preference pain does not recognise Linux installs, and therefore won't show Linux as a 
boot option.
2. There is no way to select to boot to OS X in Linux, at least so far as I know.

The best solution is to install refit, https://refit.sourceforge.net, so you can choose which OS to boot. The 
only problem with this is that there is no way to get an audible indication as to when the refit menu shows 
up. You may be able to configure it to never boot at all, and wait for you to press enter, but I haven't gone 
through refit configuration in a while.

Note that its often common for audio hardware in newer macs to not work properly in Linux, ranging from 
headphones/speakers work only, to nothing works at all, so I would do some research to make sure the audio 
chip in your mac hardware works properly with Linux. It is possible to get the hardware working, however it 
requires someone with knowledge of enabling Mac audio hardware in Linux to have access to the hardware so 
they can debug and write code to enable the hardware for use.

> I know I could do this in VMWare Fusion, ok, fine, that's fair, but
> that's not exactly what I'm wanting to do for various reasons.  For
> another thing, being I'm an audio engineer, I want to keep my mac
> partition free of pretty much anything non audio related for my
> studio workflow, and keep my Linux stuff totally seperet.

This is possible, however you may need a third partition or another drive if you intend to share files 
between operating systems. HFS+ is not useful as a filesystem, because whilst Linux can read HFS+ 
filesystems, it cannot write to an HFS+ filesystem with a journal present, and I wouldn't advise disabling 
the journaling on a filesystem with important data on it. NTFS is also not an option, because whilst there 
are solutions in Linux to write to an NTFS filesystem, OS X can only read NTF sfilesystems out of the box, 
and you would require a 3rd party solution for OS X, many of which don't perform very well unless you decide 
to buy a license to a commercial product. A Linux filesystem is also not an option, for similar reasons to 
NTFS.

Hope this helps.

Luke