Big Floppy Donkey Disk

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Triple Boot Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard & Ubuntu 10.04


Hey Floppers and welcome back to Big Floppy Donkey Disk!

Today I'm going to share with you all my most recent adventure into the realms of multi-booting operation systems.

Why would I want to triple boot Windows, Mac OS X and Ubuntu?

Well...

Windows
Windows has been my OS of choice for most of my life; it's flexibility, compatibility and gaming capabilities are excellent. Whether you like Microsoft or not, it is the dominant OS so you're probably going to need to use it.

Ubuntu
Ubuntu is the up-and-coming giant-killer of the Linux world. Being Linux, it is free, incredibly fast (loads instantly), secure and open to customization. Ubuntu itself has an incredibly helpful online community (see http://ubuntuforums.org/), dream-like package management (every application on your computer can be upgraded with the click of a button) and a user interface that I personally find easier to navigate than Mac OS X (although I am still at early stages with both OSes). And seriously, compared to other Linux distros I've tried, everything just seems to work in Ubuntu.

OS X
I've never been a Mac fanboy, in fact I've spent a lot of my uni life paying out on them. However, with the arrival of the iPhone/iPad, and the draconian restrictions on the Apple Developer Program, I've realised I'm going to have to suck it up and learn how to code Steve Jobs-style if I want to make some money on the smartphone market. Hence, I'm finally installing Mac OS X and am ready to be blown away by its style, user friendliness, security, Steve Jobs' sexy turtle-neck, etc. etc.

Why not just use wubi?
Two reasons: because wubi loads Ubuntu directly from the Windows partition, instead of its own filesystem, Ubuntu will run slower through wubi than via a side-by-side installation. Furthermore, I was unable to get wubi to install Ubuntu successfully on my dual-booted Windows 7/Snow Leopard machine. I believe it may have been to do with 64-bit Windows 7.

Okay, down to business...

Monday, July 19, 2010

Welcome to Big Floppy Donkey Disk

Howdy Floppers!

Welcome to the first post of what will hopefully be an occasionally useful blog on technology and other stuff!

Who am I?

I'm Francis. I recently finished a Software Engineering and Arts combined degree at The University of Melbourne and have six months of glorious nothingness before I have to start full-time employment.

In this time, I hope to develop an iPhone app, so there'll probably be a bit of that on here. I also run a web application development business called Square One I.T. with my business partner Kyle (check out his spiffy new blog: http://kylesinterestingstuff.blogspot.com/), so expect to see a fair bit of web dev and project management-related stuff too. I also plan to travel at the end of the year, so there may even be some hilarious traveling anecdotes!

But first, I'm going to talk about my most recent endeavour: triple booting Windows 7, Mac OSX Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 10.04.

Please feel more than welcome to post any comments, techie dilemmas or general queries on my posts and I'll do my darnedest to respond to them all.

Get Flopping!

Floppy Fran out.