Opening up the Apple
- Article 14 of 16
- LinuxUser & Developer, July 2006
With Apple’s conversion to Intel chips well under way, the possibility of running standard Linux distributions on Macs is proving enticing. Rob Buckley investigates to see whether Linux on Mactel is as easy as it sounds
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A triple boot option is still possible, however, thanks to OnMac’s members. This method involves chainloading the Lilo bootloader from the Windows XP (NTLDR) bootloader (Grub does not work with Bootcamp, since it tries to install the stage 1.5 code into the same section of disk reserved for the primary GPT record. Apple's firmware prevents this from occurring.).
While chainloading isn’t the most user-friendly of options, it does at least allow Linux to run natively on a Mac. Apart from making it easier to use and developing an EFI-native option for using Linux, the next step is to develop or locate drivers that will provide full hardware support for the Mactel under Linux.
There are also options for running Linux in virtualised and emulated environments on the Mactels. The Q emulator, based on the open source QEMU, provides probably the most sophisticated emulation environment. This is still relatively slow, because it is effectively a translation of the PowerPC version of QEMU for the Intel chip (in Apple’s terminology, a “Universal Binary”), so still converts the emulated OS’s Intel calls to PowerPC calls and then back again; once these unnecessary steps are removed it should run much faster. For long-time Mac users, it has the advantage of being able to use disk images from Virtual PC, the Microsoft-owned Intel PC emulator for PowerPC Mac. There are also fewer driver problems since Qemu emulates hardware for which most operating systems already have drivers.
A new arrival on the market is the Parallels Workstation virtualisation software. This avoids emulation, giving the hosted operating systems almost direct access to hardware. While far faster than emulation and providing support for far more operating systems than the various native schemes that have been developed so far – including various old Windows operating systems as well as OpenStep, Linux and FreeBSD – this does suffer from many of the driver problems of the native approach. Parallels’ software is still in beta and improvements to emulate various different pieces of hardware are still being included.
It remains to be seen in a native triple-boot solution can be developed. It also remains to be seen who will produce it – the hacking community or Apple. Although Apple has not shown much interest in Linux, often regarding it as a competitor rather than a potential ally, most of OS X is open source and the potential to run Linux-based desktop and server solutions may make Apple hardware more attractive to various businesses.
The Bootcamp software is seen by many as a way to get Apple hardware and software into markets previously closed to the company or that are flagging. For example, many schools in the US have been swapping to Windows-based PCs for a variety of reasons, even though they were once loyal Apple customers. However, with the option of being able to swap between XP and OS X, schools could reconsider this choice. Even more, particularly those with strong computer science courses, would reconsider if a triple or even multiple boot Mac were available that could load Linux with a simple restart.
The Bootcamp software is in beta at the moment so its full range of planned capabilities isn’t known as yet. Certain pieces of Apple hardware, such as its Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, aren’t supported by Bootcamp yet and so clearly these will be priorities for Apple before the final release is made available. But Bootcamp is actually planned for final release as part of the next paid-for upgrade to the OS X operating system: OS X 10.5, codenamed Leopard. This is due to go on sale by the end of the year. There’s a strong possibility that the final version of Bootcamp will include options for booting Linux as well as Windows XP and potentially Windows Vista. While Apple may not go to the lengths of developing its own drivers for Linux, with the access to a far greater pool of developers that the switch to Intel has given Apple, a community-derived set of drivers could well arise far more quickly than they did for PowerPC Macs. There is at least circumstantial evidence that Apple is heading in the right direction: the diskutil command line tool in OS X now includes an additional disk format option – “Linux”.
Equally possible is that corporate developers, even potentially IBM, might well decide that having a triple boot machine for their developers would be the ultimate combined money-saver and market-opener. If all it would take to do this is to produce some drivers for Mactels, they might well develop them themselves – as might the companies, such as ATI, that developed the hardware Apple uses in its Mactels. There’s already an ATI driver for the Macbook Pro laptop’s graphics card. However, as of yet, no one, not even Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat, have committed themselves to the endeavour.
Linux on Mactel is here already and is a viable option, just a few months after the Mactel’s first release. Within a few more months, Linux could be an equal partner with other operating systems on the Mactel. The cachet of Apple’s hardware combined with the power of Linux could be a powerful thing indeed.
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