Mac OSX, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux

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Pensacola, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Pro w/ Retina (Personal) and iMac (Work)
Do any of you have both Linux and Windows running on your Macbook Pro w/ Retina?

What's the best way to get all three operating systems on the Macbook Pro with Retina?

I read about vmware fusion lets you do both in real time. I also read rEFIT lets you boot either one at startup. I read that bootcamp doesn't let you do more than two OS's at a time.
 

cwa107


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Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
I don't have a Retina MacBook Pro, but there's nothing particularly unique about it, other than its limited disk capacity, that would make it any different from another Mac in terms of advisable ways to run other OSes.

Personally, I use VMWare Fusion to run both. If I were gaming on my laptop, I would run Windows 7 in Boot Camp, but I'd rather conserve the space (Fusion only grows the virtual disk as big as it needs to be, while with Boot Camp or rEFIt, the partition size is static).

I see no reason to ever run Linux natively - the only weakness of virtualization is in apps/games that require heavy 3D acceleration. Off the top, I can think of few applications on Linux that could stand to benefit from it.

The benefits of running alternate OSes in virtualization heavily outweigh the disadvantages, IMO. In addition to only taking up the amount of disk space as is absolutely necessary, virtualization allows far greater flexibility, with much less risk to your data and disk structure. You can run your Linux and Windows apps in tandem with your Mac apps and seamlessly share data amongst the different OSes. With Boot Camp and/or rEFIt, you'll spend more of your time shuffling data around, backing up and rebooting than actually enjoying the other OSes.
 
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Dre Sage
Joined
Jul 28, 2012
Messages
13
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Location
Pensacola, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Pro w/ Retina (Personal) and iMac (Work)
I don't have a Retina MacBook Pro, but there's nothing particularly unique about it, other than its limited disk capacity, that would make it any different from another Mac in terms of advisable ways to run other OSes.

Personally, I use VMWare Fusion to run both. If I were gaming on my laptop, I would run Windows 7 in Boot Camp, but I'd rather conserve the space (Fusion only grows the virtual disk as big as it needs to be, while with Boot Camp or rEFIt, the partition size is static).

I see no reason to ever run Linux natively - the only weakness of virtualization is in apps/games that require heavy 3D acceleration. Off the top, I can think of few applications on Linux that could stand to benefit from it.

The benefits of running alternate OSes in virtualization heavily outweigh the disadvantages, IMO. In addition to only taking up the amount of disk space as is absolutely necessary, virtualization allows far greater flexibility, with much less risk to your data and disk structure. You can run your Linux and Windows apps in tandem with your Mac apps and seamlessly share data amongst the different OSes. With Boot Camp and/or rEFIt, you'll spend more of your time shuffling data around, backing up and rebooting than actually enjoying the other OSes.
Thank you very much for this good advice. The only time I play games on a computer is when I'm on a forum that has a flash arcade. I am a console gamer. I don't have to worry about stuff overheating. I bought the MacBook Pro only for video editing work. The reason why I would want all three Operating Systems is to experiment with all the video editing programs out there so that I can find a formula I am comfortable with. I have not tried any Apple video editing software. I've only used Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle and Windows Movie Maker (Vista). If I end up liking Final Cut Pro I may not need all those operating systems after all...but I would probably still want them anyway just in case.
 

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