[TOS] FW: apple multi-boot

Sabin, Mihaela mihaela.sabin at unh.edu
Fri Jul 8 11:18:46 UTC 2011


Thank you, Matt, Kevin, and Steve for sharing. 

OS is not my area of expertise. The question has been triggered by having my computer, a Dell Precision M4300, up for replacement. I'm choosing an Apple because Dell has been, overall, a disappointment. The school continues to be a Windows shop, although I'm making changes in the department lab to introduce Linux. The most used OS's on my new machine will be Windows and Linux. And their main purposes will be to support application development that does not get to the hardware level. I'm interested in a solution that others are using successfully. It will help me figure out problems and learn from my peers. Happy to have TOS to ask these kind of questions! 

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Huss-Lederman [mailto:huss at beloit.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 2:20 PM
To: Sabin, Mihaela
Subject: Re: [TOS] apple multi-boot

Dear Mihaela,

I'll add a little from what others have said.  I run multi-OS on my own machine and in our advanced computer lab.  Some tradeoffs of multiboot vs. virtualized:
- Multiboot runs a given OS faster and uses less memory.  I have found you need a minimum of 4 GB to run MacOS and Windows 7 virtualized together.  I often need to shut down some apps to run others when both are running.  Linux uses less memory so is not as much an issue.  The tradeoff is you must reboot to get a different OS.
- You can use virtualization and multiboot.  This requires separate partitions on the disk.
- If you only virtualize, the other OSes can be tricked into thinking they are on their own partition (at least in VMWare  & some others).  This can allow the disk space available to an OS to grow as needed instead of fixed size partitions.  This can save disk space.

Since you are at an educational institution you might want to check out the VMWare Academic Program at http://www.vmware.com/partners/academic/program-overview.html.  It gives you free licenses with certain restrictions.  If it is for individual machines for faculty and students it has worked well for us.  Some people where I work use Parallels with success.  We settled on VMFusion because it seems just as good and was free.

Hope this helps and see you soon at POSSE.

Steve

On Jul 6, 2011, at 6:10 AM, Sabin, Mihaela wrote:

> I'm interested in a three-OS's installation on a MacBook Pro (MacOS, Windows 7, and a Linux distro). Any experience with this kind of configuration and suggestions are very much welcome!
> 
> Thanks,
> Mihaela
> 
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