Does anybody here dual-boot on a mac?

agi93 · 05-26-2011, 06:43 PM

I plan to get a new Macbook Pro some time this summer, and I was hoping I would be able to dual-boot Slackware and Mac OS X as easily as I do on my current Sony laptop. Is there anyone here who has already succeeded in dual-booting Mac OS X and Slackware, preferably on a laptop?

powerball · 05-27-2011, 04:12 AM

Hi agi93 I have an iMac desktop and been able to dual-boot. Basically you need to create partitions with the disk utility 'parted', it's on the Slackware disk. Then I use the rEFIt boot manager to set up everything and choose the operating system. You might need to press 'c' on startup to load directly into the Slackware disk, or 'option' to choose the partition.

agi93 · 05-28-2011, 10:13 AM

It's great to hear it works just fine. Thanks for the tips!

kite · 05-28-2011, 12:38 PM

I dual boot slackware 13.17 and mac here under 2011 macbook pro 13" (700 model). I use bootcamp to split partitions. Everything is great except for wifi card. It is a Broadcom 4331 card without any linux driver for the moment, and ndiswrapper does not support it due to newer ndi 6. If you need wifi, you have been warned. I am ordering a external USB wifi dongle because of this. Multi-touch of trackpad is also not working. To be honest, I like slackware more than macos. But mac has more support from various vendors.

zasavage · 05-28-2011, 01:45 PM

@kite

Have you tried 2.6.39 kernel

See it has more mac wireless cards support .

Cheers

Lawrence

kite · 05-28-2011, 11:30 PM

I am using 2.6.39. Still no driver available for that 4331 card.

frieza · 05-28-2011, 11:52 PM

not any more since i don't have the machine but i used to dual boot Power Pc macs between OSX and YellowDog Linux, of course yellow dog is powerpc only, but is based on redhat, either way i would recommend either fedora or ubuntu personally, and you probably won't need something like boot camp since there are boot loaders for linux that can run natively on macs, however boot camp seems based on the documentation i have read to be the easiest solution.

kite · 05-29-2011, 12:44 AM

I think I just jused bootcamp to split the partition. rEFIt is used to boot the system.

kite · 05-30-2011, 08:00 PM

one correction: mtrack driver is working very great for multi-touch trackpad. Here is the link:

https://github.com/BlueDragonX/xf86-input-mtrack

agi93 · 06-01-2011, 09:32 AM

Do updates work alright? I currently dual-boot Windows 7 and Slackware 13.37, and upgrades to either Windows or Slackware work without a hassle. I am curious if this works as flawlessly for Macs, including updates like 10.6.1 -> 10.6.2 and updates like 10.5 -> 10.6.

agi93 · 06-01-2011, 09:59 AM

Do updates work alright? I currently dual-boot Windows 7 and Slackware 13.37, and upgrades to either Windows or Slackware work without a hassle. I am curious if this works as flawlessly for Macs, including updates like 10.6.1 -> 10.6.2 and updates like 10.5 -> 10.6.

powerball · 06-02-2011, 12:49 AM

Yeah updates on Mac OS X are painless and like a couple of mouseclicks. You click on the menu bar and scroll down to 'Software Update', and then you download the update and it installs automatically. I was also happy to find out that the terminal, or console uses the same commands as the linux commandline.

ruario · 06-02-2011, 01:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerball

I was also happy to find out that the terminal, or console uses the same commands as the linux commandline.

Almost. They are generally the BSD variants, so occasionally some of the switches are different.