Triple Boot on MacBook Pro

Boy, Am I excited ????!!!!
This is something that I was wanting to do since I got my MBP last year. With the recent HDD upgrade, I was able to allocate more space and configure triple boot (Ubuntu 9.04, OSX Leopard, Windows XP). I just mostly followed the instructions at this Ubuntu community site. The high level steps that I followed are

1. Installed refit on OSX Leopard
2. Using boot camp, created a partition for Windows
3. Restarted OSX Leopard with Win XP CD (hold the C button to boot from CD)
4. Formatted the Win partition as NTFS and installed windows
5. Restarted and logged onto OSX
6. Using the disk utility, partitioned my Mac partition for Mac and Ubuntu. I just left the parition to be hfs and not ext3 or anything.
7. Restarted and booted onto Ubuntu 9 CD.
8. Installed Ubuntu onto the newly created partition. Specifed the parition to be / and ext3 file system. Also I didnt create a parition for swap since Refit cant handle more than 4 partitions. Although Ubuntu would warn, you can safely neglect it
9. Restart and voila !! Refit would pose you with 3 OS and choose the one you like.

The best part I liked was that Ubuntu just recognized my wireless card. In the previous dell laptop, I had a broadcom wireless card and it was a restricted driver and I always had to spend time configuring it.

Although I can use only 1 OS at a time, it just feels cool and nice to have 3 OS running on my MBP. Itz hard to explain unless you experience it I guess..

Hard drive upgrade on mac book pro

I was thinking of selling my MBP to buy the latest version. Main reason was that I had only 120GB HDD and I wanted to try Ubuntu on MBP. But after listing it on ebay and craigslist, I decided not to take a huge financial loss. so I got a new HDD (Western Digital 320GB) from newegg.com. I went through couple of sites with info on the process to upgrade hard drives and was reluctant to do it myself. I was specifically not feeling comfortable removing the whole keyboard unit and tinker with small wires inside my MBP. But then the "engineer" side of me pushed me to try it out myself. so I got the screwdrivers and stuff and started off. The procedure specified at ifixit.com was very very helpful. It had a great step-by-step notes with pictures. So I just followed it to get the HDD upgraded. It was a sweet experience and it really helped me gain more confidence. Also getting my data back was just so easy. Prior to HDD upgrade, I took a backup of my data using time machine. I installed Leopard on the new drive and on the first boot, I was given an option to restore time machine backups. So I was able to get my every bit of data and settings back in no time. Thanks to time machine, I dont really have to worry about losing data..

I vote for VMWare Fusion

VMWare fusion provides better support for kubuntu 8.04 than Parallels. Performance of windows on VmWare Fusion and Parallels seems to be the same. I didnt measure the perf using any tools but I just tried my lecture videos using both of them and I didnt see any compelling perf difference. So I returned my parallels and got Fusion instead. I am happy with it.

Trying out Parallels desktop for Mac

Since some of the my class lectures were not playing properly on Mac / Linux (due to some issue with the flash player), I had to use Windows or use flash 7 plugin on linux. After my move to Ubuntu, I couldnt get a flash 7 for Linux. With the recent announcement that Adobe has open-sourced flash, I hope this issues gets fixed soon. To listen to lectures, I thought of installing windows on my macbook pro. I was in a dilemma between bootcamp and a virtualization s/w. I finally decided on virtualization, since I dont have to reboot and could share all my mac/win documents. So I opted for Parallels desktop. It is a great product and it was running a Windows VM to near native performance. I didnt have any issues, I could listen to my lectures and could copy-paste across Leopard and XP. As ubuntu got released on Apr 24, I dowloaded a copy of kubuntu and installed it on parallels. It was not very supportive. I couldnt get full screen and was not able to change monitor settings and stuff. Basically, Parallels doesnt yet support (K)ubuntu 8.04 and it is frustrating. There was not much response from the parallels helpdesk forum. so I am planning to tryout VmWare Fusion. I guess i'll install a trial copy and then try out WinXP and Kubuntu 8.04 and if all goes well (Fusion claims official support for (K)ubuntu 8.04) i'll mostly switch over to Fusion