FBSD on MacBook Pro w/ Core 2 Duo? (was Re: Which OS for notebook)

[Roland Smith]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 07:39:59AM -0400, Jud wrote:
> > Here's an excellent place to start your research:
> > 
> > http://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook

> 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

No. You should use the amd64 version. This works without problems on my Core2
systems. 

The IA-64 version is only for the Itanium
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium] processors, which never became really
popular and are mostly found in HP servers.

> - 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?

Have a look at
[http://blogs.freebsdish.org/rpaulo/2008/08/31/freebsd-ia32-efi-boot-loader/].
Maybe that will work for you? As of 8.1-RELEASE, I don't see the source for
this EFI boot in the ia32 boot loader (which amd64 also uses). 

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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