Installing Linux on a MacBook Pro

[Ayanami]

Alright, I'm somewhat new to Linux, well, somewhat new to Mac, but really new to Linux. I would have used it more on my PC when I had it, but I could never get the wireless card to work. How would I go about installing it on my MBP? Assuming I have no data on my HD worth keeping (aka, I can wipe it clean if need be).

I would like to be dual-booting w/ 10.5 at bare minimum, and booting 5 partitions if at all possible.

Ideally, my HD would look something like this;

Open SuSE - 7 gigs

10.5 Leopard - 15 gigs

10.4 Tiger (Highly stripped down) - 10 gigs

Windows Vista - 15 gigs (For games)

The Rest - One big Fat 32 drive

 

Aside from Parallels, any options? I would like to stick with the Mac's booting EFI thing if I could....

[Soündless]

i am pretty new to linux too, but i would boot up in a partitioning program. ( i would use a mac install dvd and use disk utility to make 5 fat 32 partitions). then i asume you could use rEFIt to "penta" boot your system

[Korrupted]

I actually installed Fedora Core 7 just the other day. All I had to do was use Boot Camp to make a Windows partition, then boot up the DVD, and format it to an LVM partition, which I then made 2 virtual partitions in it, one for /, and one for swap. After that, it installed like a snap. No effort.

[bonko]

i partitioned in terminal after installing rfedit to set up a triple boot (xp,ubuntu,osx) and was unable to boot the windows because the keyboard was unresponsive during grub bootloading. Also, idefrag, and drive genius would no longer allow me to defrag my osx partition. is there any way to revert the drive to one partition without reinstalling osx? What i would like is to revert to 1 partition that osx sees as unchanged, remove refit, repartition with bootcamp and instead of windows, install debian (i can handle this part) ... tall order..

 

btw, I love this site. (my cherry poppin post!)

 

[bonestonne]

using an intel based computer, you'll need to do some extreme modding to make it work.

 

1) install Apple first. worst part of it all. only give it the size you want it to be when all is said and done.

2) boot into Linux Live CD. once in, partition the rest of the drive as you want, IE, create a 15gig partition for windows, 20 gig partition for linux, doesn't matter, but it has to be done here! DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A LINUX SWAP!

3) install windows. be very picky about the partition you want it on, don't delete the Unknown partition, thats the Apple partition. upon restarting after the install, stick in the Linux install CD!

4) Install Linux! very important that you make sure your partitions are correct, don't overwrite any or you will fail at this.

5) Install the other Linux! shouldn't be brain surgery, however DO NOT CHANGE YOUR BOOT LOADER!

6) boot into Linux. preferrably the one that has the Boot Loader on it.

in here, you need to edit your boot loader to show all of your operating systems by PARTITION and give them names and make sure they have "chainloader +1" or it will not boot.

7) restart and make sure your boot loader shows you the Operating Systems you have installed. if it doesn't show you all of them, you edited the wrong Linux boot loader, go into the other Linux and change it.

8) continue to work through this until its correct.

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you need windows installed FIRST after Apple because it will make the boot loader active for 10 seconds rather than booting straight into linux after 3. Since Apple was the first OS [Tiger and Leoppard will need to be installed before anything else] they will be respectively partitions "hda 0,0" and "hda 0,1". those are the partitions you will direct the boot loader towards for the multi-boot of each Apple OS. the first apple OS you install will be "hda 0,0".

 

the reason this is a tricky guide is because it does not involve a third party boot loader, it uses Grub or Lilo from the Linux distrobutions. this is much more effective than relying on a third party boot loader and is harder to lose. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T UNINSTALL LINUX OR YOU WILL LOSE THE ENTIRE BOOT LOADER.

 

just be prepared for a long slow process, but it will work in the end. its how i pulled off my triple boot on a single 250gb hard drive. i'm using another 80gb drive formatted as FAT32 for my music and to swap files between operating systems. if you have a question just ask, it may be unclear, but thats as dumbed down as i can make the process.