Apple has just published Boot Camp, a utility to install Windows XP on a Mac. As I understand it, this provides an EFI module for legacy BIOS compatibility, a set of Windows drivers for the Apple hardware and the required tools to ease Windows' installation.
In other words: it lets you to flawlessly install Windows XP SP2 (be it the Home or Professional edition) in one of the new Intel-based Macs. Beta versions are now available for downloaded and the final version will be included in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Great, Apple. I do not have an excuse any more to not replace my desktop machine with a Macintosh. In fact, I'm dying to switch but I'll resist for some more time ;-)
Edit (April 7th, 20:57): Dirk Olbertz has installed Ubuntu on his iMac using Boot Camp (the link is in German). So this seems not to be restricted to Windows.
2 comments:
Will this also enable us to run NetBSD/i386 unmodified on the new Intel-Macs?
No idea, but based on what the page says (or what it not says; it only talks about Windows) I deduce that it probably will not work "out of the box".
Anyway, I wouldn't like to need such "hacks" to get NetBSD to work on those machines. NetBSD is about portability and being it open source, one should implement EFI support directly into the system.
I hope the ongoing ia64 port will shed some light into this issue.
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