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rEFIt 0.5 was released today. It supports booting legacy operating systems through the CSM in the updated firmware (a.k.a. "Boot Camp").

 

For lack of documentation from Apple, rEFIt currently uses a trick that requires an additional boot cycle. After you select a Boot Camp entry in the rEFIt menu, the Mac will immediately reboot and then boot into Windows without asking. On the next boot, the rEFIt menu will be shown again.

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Christoph Pfisterer-

 

Thanks so much for keeping us up to date... and for your hard work.

 

Out of curiousity, let me ask you this - in light of the release of Boot Camp, how has your plans for rEFIt changed? Have you adjusted the direction for your project?

 

As always, great job.

 

-Mash

Out of curiousity, let me ask you this - in light of the release of Boot Camp, how has your plans for rEFIt changed? Have you adjusted the direction for your project?

Only slightly. My original plan was to integrate a third party CSM (e.g. BAMBIOS, or an improved version of XOM), but now that we have an official CSM in the firmware, that is no longer necessary. Boot Camp support in rEFIt still needs improvement, but some of that requires Apple's cooperation. The other goals for rEFIt have not changed -- configurability, file system drivers, partitioning and diagnostic tools.

 

What has changed more significantly is the direction of my efforts outside of rEFIt. Apple now provides an all-round solution for Windows XP and cares about its future development, so my focus is moving back towards Linux. Also, I plan to make a build environment for EFI applications that "just works" on both Windows/VC++ and Linux/gcc. Basically, a merge of Intel's EFI Application Toolkit and gnu-efi, with some useful bits from TianoCore. Unfortunately, there are much more ideas than available time...

Not to sound like an idiot, but what is rEFI? or more importantly, how does it help the average user in the dual boot process??? (me :graduated: )

rEFIt is a boot menu. It is activated when you (re)boot your Mac and lets you choose which operating system to start.

 

When all you want is dual-booting Mac OS X and Windows XP and you're happy with using Startup Disk or holding the Option key during boot to select the OS, then you don't need rEFIt. On the other hand, if you want to boot Linux, explore the EFI environment, or simply don't like Apple's boot selection methods, then rEFIt may be interesting for you.

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