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It all works very cleanly and smoothly – I’d previously used it on several “real” PCs. While convenient, there is a small performance penalty running Ubuntu from within the Windows file system rather than with a “real” Linux file system, although the penalty isn’t noticeable in my tests. And it adds an item to uninstall Ubuntu to the Windows Add/Remove Programs control panel. Rather than adding Ubuntu and Windows to the standard Linux GRUB boot loader, it adds Ubuntu as an option to the standard Windows boot menu. Instead, Wubi creates Linux hard drive partitions living on files in the standard Windows Files folder structure. Installing inside Windows does not repartition the drive. Maybe that would work with a Boot Camp Windows installation – I didn’t test it).

#Boot camp mac os and ubuntu full#

(Alternatively, a user could choose the “Demo and full installation” option, which will reboot the system to the Ubuntu CD, allowing for a standard installation, complete with nondestructive repartitioning of the hard drive.

#Boot camp mac os and ubuntu install#

With Windows running, just insert a Ubuntu (8.04 or 8.10) install CD the Wubi installer will auto-open, with an option to “Install inside Windows”. It does this by using a feature called Wubi – but potential users don’t need to know anything about that. Those versions offer the option of installing Ubuntu Linux from within Windows and making use of the Windows file system – no repartitioning necessary.

The 2008 versions (8.04 and 8.10) of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution adds a feature that makes all this command-line stuff unnecessary.

Early on, the user is guided through using the Terminal to repartition the hard drive, the first of a long list of command-line actions. but the first hit – a 2007 article, Triple Boot via BootCamp Ubuntu – makes it seem more daunting that I want to get into.

Googling something like Mac Boot Camp Linux gets pages of links showing that it’s possible. I can run Linux in a virtual session using my choice of Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or the free VirtualBox, but I’d like the option of booting my system directly to a Linux installation. I’ve wanted to be able to install Linux on my Mac. How about a mention of this in one of the dialogues as users are running the Boot Camp Assistant?)

#Boot camp mac os and ubuntu drivers#

(These drivers are typically on the Disc 1 of the set that ships with compatible Macs, but Apple doesn’t do a good enough job of letting users know about this as they’re setting up Boot Camp. I doubt that Apple wants the responsibility for providing drivers for the wide range of PC operating systems. Moreover, Apple supports Boot Camp users by including Windows drivers for the hardware built-into its Intel Macs. First, unlike most PCs, the Intel Macs do not use old-style BIOS at startup they use a newer EFI ( Extensible Firmware Interface) that isn’t supported by earlier versions of Windows or by many other PC operating systems. I can think of a couple of reasons for the limitations.

#Boot camp mac os and ubuntu upgrade#

(And note that upgrade versions of these are not supported, at least not easily.) The major limitation, at least for me, is that Boot Camp lets users install any PC operating system they want, as long as it’s Windows XP (SP2 or later) or Vista. In typical Apple fashion, Boot Camp “just works”, smoothly and easily – at least if you’re prepared to accept the limitations hard-wired into it by Apple. (See, for instance, my June 2006 column, Windows XP on Macintel a Reality.)Īpple forestalled all this by releasing Boot Camp – first as a beta that ran on then-current Mac OS X 10.4 and later as a Leopard-only official release. The ways they came up with worked – but as with so-called Hackintoshes (non-Apple PCs running Mac OS X), it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t something that most users wanted to try on their own. When Apple’s Macintosh computers migrated from using PowerPC CPUs to using Intel chips, the hacker community took it as a challenge to find to a way to run standard PC operating systems – primarily Windows and Linux – on the new Macs.