FBSD on MacBook Pro w/ Core 2 Duo? (was Re: Which OS for notebook)
Jud
judmarc at fastmail.fm
Tue Oct 12 11:40:01 UTC 2010
On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 10:20 -0500, "Brandon Gooch"
<jamesbrandongooch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Arvid Warnecke
> <arvid.warnecke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have been thinking about FreeBSD on the Macbook Pro dual booting (I
> > need Mac OSX for photography software), but I am not sure if the
> > hardware will be supported that well.
>
> Here's an excellent place to start your research:
>
> http://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook
I'd posted a question about this to this list a couple of weeks ago, but
without a descriptive title. Apologies for that, and hoping a more
descriptive title plus a more detailed message on my part elicits more
specific answers.
I've got a 13" MacBook Pro, version 5,5 specifically, with an Intel Core
2 Duo CPU and 4GB RAM (and a 256GB SSD, though I'm reasonably sure
that's not problematic). I'm dual booting Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4
and Win 7 64-bit using rEFIt.
I want to install FreeBSD as a 3rd OS alongside OS X and Win. Here are
a couple of questions that arose during my research:
- I'd like to run a 64-bit version of FreeBSD. My reading on the
FreeBSD website appears to indicate that the correct 64-bit version for
the Core 2 Duo would be ia-64, and IIRC the website references indicated
problems running X.Org on that platform. Additionally, problems are
mentioned with various (unnamed) other ports. I do want to use FreeBSD
as a desktop. Is the info about problems with X.Org and other ports on
ia-64 current and correct, ruling out its use as a desktop on the
MacBook Pro for now? Am I correct in thinking from what I've read that
the amd-64 version of FreeBSD would not work with the Core 2 Duo? Does
this leave 32-bit FreeBSD as the only version I could reasonably install
to use as a desktop on this machine?
- If I follow the plain install instructions on the wiki page linked in
the quoted message above (after first making space for FreeBSD using the
Mac OS X disk utility), will rEFIt Just Work, i.e., recognize FreeBSD
and include it as an option in its boot menu? Or is there something
else I've got to do?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer on these questions.
Comments on other 'gotcha' items I may have missed are also welcome.
Jud
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