Mac,Linux and Windows all together in one laptop?

[Daylight 18]

A friend of mine did it.I don't know how he did it but he did it.

He now has a computer with Linux,Mac and Windows in it?

 

 

 

But how did he do it?Can anypony tell me?

Edited September 29, 2012 by Moon of Day

[Retro*Derpy 3,081]

Well, I am going to assume he has a huge hard drive, but you can install these rather easily. If you have all the OS on disk it is as simple as putting in the disk and installing it. On boot up, if you go to the BIOS screen you can choose what OS you wish to use.

[Daylight 18]

Well, I am going to assume he has a huge hard drive, but you can install these rather easily. If you have all the OS on disk it is as simple as putting in the disk and installing it. On boot up, if you go to the BIOS screen you can choose what OS you wish to use.

 

When he did it his computer became super-lagy.He can't do anything about it.He doesn't know how to uninstall it so he says that he will get a new computer.

[Retro*Derpy 3,081]

When he did it his computer became super-lagy.He can't do anything about it.He doesn't know how to uninstall it so he says that he will get a new computer.

 

Well yeah it became super laggy because he is running on one maybe two processor(s) and a laptop? (I don't know what laptop he has) That would be a struggle on most desktops.

I believe if he still has the OS disk he can simply put it in to remove whatever OS he wishes to remove, if not go to the BIOS screen and I believe he can delete a OS there.

If he can't do this, then I would buy another computer.

 

 

*Fixed*

Edited September 30, 2012 by Bobthecableman

[letterone 1,203]

Mm, so he's got two crap OS's and one awesomazing one.

 

Super duper.

 

Oh, and the awesomazing one, as you should be able to guess, is Windows. Mac and Linux are both crap. Mac is only good for art, and Linux is only good for being free.

[StarPhoenix 2]

There are actually several ways to do this I believe. The one I know of Involves using one operating system as the one it boots from, and then Installing some virtual machine software to that operating system. From there, it creates multiple "virtual disks" to install files to, so each operating system can run safely together on one Hard drive. The operating systems are booted from a virtual environment, so it will take additional resources and time on the computer to perform any task from the original computer to this virtual environment. This may be why it runs laggy and your friend's Laptop. I Hope this helps!

[Daylight 18]

Well yeah it became super lagy because you are running on one maybe two processor(s) and a laptop? (I don't know what laptop you are using) That would be a struggle on most desktops.

I believe if you still have the OS disk you can simply put it in to remove whatever OS you wish to remove, if not go to the BIOS screen and I believe you can delete a OS there.

If he can't do this, then I would buy another computer.

 

I didn't do it in my computer.A friend did it in his computer.Didn't you see the post i said "him" or "his" words.He was using Windows by the way. Edited September 29, 2012 by Moon of Day

[Creamy Arty 6,251]

There are a number of ways to do it, but I think the easiest would be to install the bootloaders for Linux and Mac on their respective partitions while letting Windows have the master boot record, then editing the BCD/boot.ini file to point to the other operating systems. I'm not using Mac, but that's how I got a triple-boot of Windows 7, Windows XP, and Linux going on my computers.

 

Any lag your friend is experiencing is unlikely to be the result of him having three operating systems because only one of them is active at a time. The problem is more likely in whatever method he was using to pull this off.

 

And there's no need to buy a new computer or a new hard drive. Put in any operating system's installation disk and use it's partition manager to delete all existing partitions.

 

Linux is only good for being free.

Linux is good for lots of stuff, the only catch is users need some amount of competency with the OS to do anything. If it wasn't so it wouldn't have such a large user base.

[letterone 1,203]

Linux is good for lots of stuff, the only catch is users need some amount of competency with the OS to do anything. If it wasn't so it wouldn't have such a large user base.

 

Let me reiterate. It's only good for being free in my opinion.

 

I'm real impatient. I can't take the time to work around getting Windows programs to work on Ubuntu. I'd much rather very easily put something together in Windows quickly.

[joeyh3 153]

When he did it his computer became super-lagy.He can't do anything about it.He doesn't know how to uninstall it so he says that he will get a new computer.

 

Are the operating systems actually installed on the computer, or is using a program like VMWare, VirtualBox, etc to run virtual machines?

 

If he's running virtual machines, then of course it will be slow - most consumer grade computers are not really designed to handle virtualization that well. It takes up a lot of CPU power and memory to run virtual machines, because you're essentially running two operating systems at once. If you're doing virtualization, you need a lot of RAM and a powerful CPU.

 

If he's got multiple OS's actually installed on the computer, and he's multibooting, it's possible that the hard disk is just heavily fragmented or experienced data corruption during the process. You didn't mention which OS is running slowly, or if it's all of them. At any rate, if they're installed on the actual hard disk (instead of just a virtual machine), the easiest way to remove them involves reformatting - be sure to back up your data first.

 

Oh, and the awesomazing one, as you should be able to guess, is Windows. Mac and Linux are both crap. Mac is only good for art, and Linux is only good for being free.

 

Yeah.... No.

 

Without Linux, the Internet would not be anything like it is. The overwhelming majority of web servers run Linux, as do a lot of the routers and switches that power the Internet. Even devices such as TVs, DVRs, cell phones, GPSs, MP3 players, etc all run Linux as well. It's great because it's so adaptable, it can do just about anything. You probably use Linux multiple times a day and don't even realize it.

 

Also, when referring to Linux, "Free" doesn't mean price, but instead freedom. You're free to take Linux and modify it however you want, do whatever you want with it, and then redistribute it. There are a number of Linux distributions that do come with a price tag, such as RedHate Enterprise Linux and SuSE Enterprise.

 

And really, saying stuff like "Mac is for art only" is a thing of the past - there's so many programs available for each of the three platforms that if you can find a program that does something on one, chances are you can easily find a similar program on the other two. Unless you're doing some very specific, specialized task, you can probably make do with any OS.

 

Especially since most things are becoming web-based now - all three systems take you to the same Internet.

[Lost Profile 644]

I have a MacBook Pro... I'm running windows 7 on it... It is posible for me to make a Linux partition... But I'm NEVER going to use it so why should I bother...

 

Plus it's super easy to do... For a computer nerd like me! Lol

[Sticky Apple 46]

I did the same thing, except I don't multiboot. I just run Virtualbox with several OSes on it. No fuss, no muss and I don't need to partition up a hard drive. Not that I'd do that with my SSD. xD

[Solar Wind 595]

Lol @ Linux fanboys.

 

Anyway Why would he put them all on one? That just doesnt seem productive to me, multiple OS's would just get me confused.

[Creamy Arty 6,251]

Let me reiterate. It's only good for being free in my opinion.

 

I'm real impatient. I can't take the time to work around getting Windows programs to work on Ubuntu. I'd much rather very easily put something together in Windows quickly.

And it's as valid as any other, but I might have come across sounding belligerent or rude when that wasn't my intent. Saying it requires "competency," upon re-reading my last post, might be misconstrued as meaning that I think most people who use the other two OSes exclusively are generally incompetent or stupid. My apologies if anybody only picked up on that second possible meaning. I was in a hurry to hit the road and banged out the post rather quickly. "Proficiency" might have been a better choice. Linux generally requires that it's users learn some things in order to use it efficiently whereas somebody who has never touched a computer before could probably sit down in front of Windows and start installing things and modifying system settings in no time.

 

 

There are a number of Linux alternatives to pretty much any Windows application you can think of, so getting a Windows program to run on Linux is rarely necessary. Even so, WINE has gotten much more intuitive recently and will do most of the work for you in most instances. Not sure when last you tried using Linux but it's gotten much more user-friendly over the past couple years, to the point that anybody should be able to just sit down in front of it and figure it out how to do the basics rather quickly. Drivers aren't the nightmare they once were either.

 

If he's running virtual machines, then of course it will be slow - most consumer grade computers are not really designed to handle virtualization that well. It takes up a lot of CPU power and memory to run virtual machines, because you're essentially running two operating systems at once. If you're doing virtualization, you need a lot of RAM and a powerful CPU.

 

If he's got multiple OS's actually installed on the computer, and he's multibooting, it's possible that the hard disk is just heavily fragmented or experienced data corruption during the process. You didn't mention which OS is running slowly, or if it's all of them. At any rate, if they're installed on the actual hard disk (instead of just a virtual machine), the easiest way to remove them involves reformatting - be sure to back up your data first.

Operating systems tend to be less demanding when they're virtualized than when they're running as a host. I have a Server 2008 domain controller running in Virtualbox with only one CPU core assigned and 768 megs of memory, and it gets the job done just fine. Windows clients use about the same, and of course Linux's requirements can vary by configuration. I currently have a Debian LAMP server with LXDE running with 128 megs of memory, and it's barely using more than 90 of it.

 

Windows 7 and Vista automatically defrag at 1 AM if the computer is running at the time, so it's unlikely that fragmentation would be an issue on those partitions unless the computer wasn't running or wasn't booted into Windows during that time, ever. Linux file systems are far more efficient and don't require manual defragmentation. The same probably goes for Mac, but I'm not certain; I make that assumption because Mac OSX is really BSD Unix in disguise and is therefore POSIX compliant, and it just seems weird that HFS+ wouldn't be able to handle it.

[Gone Airbourne 21,969]

Two summers ago. I took some computer classes and my professor had installed the latest version of all operating systems on his computer. All used for different purposes obviously. But you have to partition your hard drive and i recommend you back up all your data on a external hard drive. I am currently running a dual-boot of windows 7 and Ubuntu of Linux.

[joeyh3 153]

Operating systems tend to be less demanding when they're virtualized than when they're running as a host. I have a Server 2008 domain controller running in Virtualbox with only one CPU core assigned and 768 megs of memory, and it gets the job done just fine. Windows clients use about the same, and of course Linux's requirements can vary by configuration. I currently have a Debian LAMP server with LXDE running with 128 megs of memory, and it's barely using more than 90 of it.

I wouldn't say that a domain controller would be a good benchmark, as Active Directory is not resource intensive by any means, especially if it's a test environment. At work, I have a physical domain controller running with only 1GB of RAM (and it's the operations master and root DNS server for our organization), and that thing runs very smoothly.

 

Besides, servers in general are far more optimized for resource utilization than desktop OS. Especially when it comes to the GUI - Windows servers typically have a lightweight, flat GUI with no themes or that, while Linux servers typically don't even have a GUI at all. In comparison, Desktop versions of Linux and Windows tend to have GUIs with plenty of effects, transparacy, animations, etc. Such tasks are normally handled by the GPU, but since VMs don't have access to the host's GPU, it's up to the vCPU to perform those renderings instead, which conversely is passed onto the host's CPU.

 

Another issue is hard disks - desktops and laptops typically only have a single drive, but when they're running VMs, you have multiple operating systems trying to access data on that drive instead of just a single one. Again, that's another bottleneck that can harm performance.

 

Windows 7 and Vista automatically defrag at 1 AM if the computer is running at the time, so it's unlikely that fragmentation would be an issue on those partitions unless the computer wasn't running or wasn't booted into Windows during that time, ever. Linux file systems are far more efficient and don't require manual defragmentation. The same probably goes for Mac, but I'm not certain; I make that assumption because Mac OSX is really BSD Unix in disguise and is therefore POSIX compliant, and it just seems weird that HFS+ wouldn't be able to handle it.

The last time I owned a Mac, which was about four years ago during the OS10.5 days, it did manage the drives in a way as to prevent fragmentation, and automatically fragmentation what did occur.

 

However, like I said, he never mentioned if it was a specific OS or all of them, so you can't really speculate on what the potential cause is without that knowledge.