Virtual Machine for Ubuntu and Windows

Ey guys, I know that when I get a mac I am going to be installing 3 OS's (OS X, Vista, Ubuntu) on my machine. I was wondering if using a virtual machine like VMWare Fusion or parallels would be able to access the Windows AND Ubuntu partitions. If so, how easy is it to switch from partition? And is it possible to emulate both partitions simultaneously(I know this would be costly on resources)?

Thanks in advance!

 

Just curious, but why do you need to have three OS's installed?

 

Ahh, but the real question, my friend, is "Why not?".

Edit: Ok, seriously, I'm buying mac for OS X, so that is a given, Windows for gaming, and Ubuntu for any programs I need that I don't want to get on the others. Since programs on Ubuntu are free.

 

You can install Windows and Ubuntu as VMs, making them all accessible through OS X. You can install Windows on Boot Camp and access it using VMWare or Parallels, but you cannot install Ubuntu on Boot Camp and access it using VMWare or Parallels. Installing Ubuntu on Boot Camp also requires some hacking.

 

Boot Camp only supports Windows XP and Vista at this time only, and as Budding has mentioned, some hacking is required to get Ubuntu running through Boot Camp. I do not think VMWare Fusion can launch a Boot Camped Ubuntu install anyway (unless there's a hack for this already as well).

I recommend installing Vista under boot camp, and Ubuntu as a 100% virtual machine on VMWare. One quick note, in my experience I haven't had great performance running Vista through VMWare, even with upgrading the memory to 4 GB, on my MBP. I might have dome something wrong or just have too many applications running on Vista to begin with, but it's something I've experienced.

 

vmware should allow you to run linux on a vm on your mac. parallels and boot camp are tied to windows.

why do you need ubuntu again? I'm a long time Linux user but now that I'm using OS X as my desktop, I simply can't seem to find the time to load ubuntu and my old windows boxes I had planned to belt sand and load ubuntu are collecting dust.

Can you give examples of programs for Ubuntu you would want to run? The two biggest ones I need are Open office (I use Neo office) and Gimp. Both work flawlessly on Leopard and are free.

 

osx does sort of kill the need for linux. basically the linux software library exists for the mac. *nix.

that said, vmware can run a bootcamped ubuntu... im not sure about vmware running bootcamped triple boot setups.

 

How well does virtualbox work for accessing windows on bootcamp via a vm? I switched to virtualbox from vmware on my windows machine and I really like it, so it would be good to know if it works well on macs too in this respect.

 

I ran a system with triple boot some years ago. Windows wanted its partition to start below the 2 gig mark. The Linux Boot partition wanted to live below the 2 gig mark. Another flavor of *nix wanted its boot partition to live below the 2 gig mark. I told grub about all 3 os's. I told windows' boot.ini about all 3 os's. If I remember correctly, you had to grab a snapshot of the first 256 (?) bytes of the sector you want to boot from so windows can find it and jump to it.

If I were running 3 os's, I would want OS X on top and the other two virtualized. Wait until you've used OS X a few times before you bother virtualizing Ubuntu. You might find you needn't bother. BTW, no need to turn on the OS X root passwd/root account. See how far sudo takes you. It's probably far enough.

 

Yeah i might just do that, but I just wanted to know what options I had available and what would and would not be possible.

Thanks for the replies guys!

 

+1 for the above recommendations

I use Parallels for my (bootcamped) WinXP partition and my virtual Ubuntu machine. I have 2Gb of RAM and have no issues running Visual Studio 2008 + SQL Server on the virtual WinXP. For gaming I bootcamp as Parallels split resources (it assigns WinXP one of the two cores).
As for why Ubuntu, my computer science dept has some processor emulators that only run on Linux, unless some hacking is done. Something to do with some specific system calls and small/big endians stuff I'm told.