04-04-2012, 09:31 PM
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Not all non-Apple PCs still use BIOS. I recall that at least some Lenovo Thinkpads do. So why does Boot Camp have to provide a BIOS-compatibilty mode?
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To my knowledge Windows (even Windows 7) require a working BIOS in order to boot. I know that for years Intel has been pushing EFI but as of yet, MS has not bought into it. Perhaps there are mods that will allow Windows to boot from an EFI PC? Some Thinkpads may have been modded, that I don't know.
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So we have to depend on Apple for some of the drivers, and those can only be attained through Boot Camp, is that correct? In terms of Linux, is it safe to assume that most of those have open source equivalents? I wouldn't imagine that Apple would write drivers for Linux, so that seems to be the only way to have Linux running on a Mac: non-Apple, community drivers. Is that correct?
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Basically correct. Apple drivers for proprietary hardware are not available anywhere else except from Apple. Newer Macs can only run Windows 7. As soon as the Boot Camp assistant is started, you'll receive a message that a driver image needs to be downloaded from Apple and burned to disk or thumb drive.
Apple does not support Linux but as you point out, there are many open source drivers that work well. The Ubuntu forums are a great place to obtain info about that.
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What about other bootloaders, like GRUB and LILO? Do they support HFS+ filesystems? Is there anything that makes them unpractical?
Is it possible to boot from a Linux live CD/USB? How is Linux installation usually done?
Do Parallels and Fusion provide that functionality for non-Windows OSs?
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Neither GRUB nor LILO support the HFS+ file system. However, when installing Linux in a dual or triple boot configuration, GRUB or LILO must be used to boot the Linux file system. And yes, you can boot a Linux live CD on a Mac.
Linux installation, triple or dual boot is a bit complex. I'll refer you to a link from the Ubuntu forums. Go
here.
And finally, yes Parallels, Fusion, and even VirtualBox run Linux distros rather well. Fusion has many ready made pre-virtualized images that can be downloaded including Ubuntu and many others.
Personally, if I ever setup another triple boot scenario on either of my Macs I would use my copy of VMWare Fusion. A lot easier than using rEFIt but just not as elegant or pretty.
