Installing Windows Vista and Fedora 8 on a MacBook Pro

I had been looking for a new computer for a couple of months, the requirements were simple: That it support 4 Gigas of Ram, that the video card not be inside the Board (integrated), that the disk be large, etc., etc., what anyone wants for their computer.

After many coincidences and searching in several stores and checking the credit cards, the financing, and more coincidences, I ended up buying this:

A MacBook Pro, the machine that runs vista best according to PC Magazine

So now that it was already unpacked and ready on my desk, I set myself the task of installing the operating systems I work with now (Windows Vista and Fedora 8) and this was the result:

First I installed the OS, that is I followed the installer's instructions. (My machine came with MacOS 10.5.2), (After this I was looking at BootCamp, the utility included in my Mac to install Vista, it is a wizard that seems to work quite well, it starts with a screen to partition the Disk, and I could see in the manual that afterwards it would also assist in the installation of Vista, the MacOS CD brings all the Drivers for Vista so the process of putting only vista must be very, but very simple. If you only want Windows Vista on your Mac and want dual Boot I recommend using BootCamp. )

(Note: If you only want Windows Vista just insert the CD boot with the ALT key from the vista CD and follow the installation steps, according to what I have seen on the Internet this allows you to have a machine with only vista but I cannot assure it).

I want 3 systems and well if I already paid for the MacOS surely I can try it a few times….

So, I could not use BootCamp, I had to partition the disk using MacOS commands, I went to the terminal console and repartitioned the disk with the command:

command$ sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 50G “MS-DOS FAT32” “Linux” 30G “MS-DOS FAT32” “Windows” 110G

Here what I am saying is that I leave 50G for the MacOS, 30 for the Linux and 110 for the Vista. (If this command gives you errors it is surely because the sum of the sizes exceeds the total hard disk or the free space, remember that MacOS uses two partitions, that of the Operating System itself and that of the EFI Boot (New standard recommended by Intel to someday replace the old MBR))

I inserted the vista CD I restarted the machine and held down the Alt key while it starts, I started the Vista installer and followed the instructions, when it asked me the location I told it I wanted to use partition 4. (By the way it is called sda4.) It is important that it stays in this partition. Checking on the Internet I have found that BootCamp and other utilities need Vista to stay in the last partition of the Chain.

During the installation vista recommends formatting the partition to NTFS, so I did the format and continued the installation.

The installation reaches a point where it asks to restart, it could not, but it does not matter I leave it like that for now.

Then I installed Fedora 8, I inserted the fedora 8 CD, I turned off the machine and turned it on while I had the Alt key pressed, I started with the Fedora CD (which curiously appears as Windows in the Mac startup). I followed the installation instructions, when it reached the point where it asked what type of installation schema I want to do, I selected Custom. (This is important, if you select the default option, it formats the entire disk, if you select use the free space and default schema it is likely there is nothing free or that the Linux does not fit). When selecting a custom schema the partition table appears, so I selected sda3, then I selected the edit option: It asks me for the installation base I select “”, and I told it to format the partition using ext3. (This cost me several installs, I was formatting with Fat32 and at the end I could not install the GRUB). I also selected advanced GRUB options and told it to copy it in the same sda3. (Do not install it in sda it damages the other operating systems). This installation does reach the end.

I restarted the machine, now I entered the MacOS, I copied the files of the rEFit utility in the root of the MacOS (Machitosh HD) I opened the terminal console, I went to the efi/refit directory (cd into /efi/refi) and I ran the enable.sh script (run ./enable.sh)

With this I already had a menu that shows me the 3 OS.

Mac and Linux start but Vista does not, so I inserted the vista CD, restarted with ALT, started from the vista CD, it did not install, I selected the repair option, a startup (Boot) error was detected, and it was repaired. Now I can start vista from the Mac startup menu.

(If it does not start do the repair process again from the Windows Vista Installation CD.)

Once I started vista I just inserted the MacOS disk (10.5.2) the BootCam setup started by itself and installed all the drivers, when restarting, my Windows vista rating is 4.8. And it runs really fast.

I test all the OS and they all work, my machine has 3 OS!!!

Postscript (Problems)
Vista: It seems I cannot hibernate or leave in StandBy, that is something I use a lot so it will be necessary to investigate more, it seems SP1 solves it.

Juan Carlos Peláez

Software Architect.

Keywords: MacOS 10.5.2, MacBook Pro, Fedora 8, Windows Vista Business, rEfiT 0.11, Operating Systems, Laptops.