Help with the dual OS stuff...?

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Okay, so I was wondering about that virtual pc software...like bootcamp and VMware fusion...
How does one go about installing it on a mac? Is it actually worth it? I'd like to be able to play pc games and use my zen, and stuff, without switching the computer.
Does it take up a lot of room and slow it down? I really haven't got much of an idea...XD So help, please?

If you have a recent Intel Mac (Leopard or Snow Leopard) you have Boot Camp already. You just need a Windows installation disc and roughly 30GB of free space on your hard drive.

Oh! I thought that was only the most recent ones. Do I have to restard my computer every time from switching?

with boot camp you have to restart your computer, if you want to run operating systems within your normal mac os I would suggest virtualbox (free) or purchasing VMWare fusion as the way to go.

you can get virtualbox at http://virtualbox.org

Setting up a dual boot is fairly simple. I would prepare the use of another computer in case you have lost access to yours so you can shout "HEEELLLPP!!"

Running dual-boot is the better option but has the flaw of having to reboot to switch between the two.

Running software such as Virtualbox, VMware, etc gives you the bonus of running just one operating system without having to reboot.
The flaws here are that should the main operating system go down, you have access to neither. Performance can drop when using the secondary operating system inside another.
The added benefit being the main operating system is left mainly untouched and no configuring with complicated stuff like the MBR, etc

I would suggest trying VirtualBox first. You will need the operating system disc in physical format or as an image which the virtual machine can use directly.

Anyway - Dual booting is so old-hat. I boot 6 of the things.... What's that, sextobooting? (6 OSs anyway)

Virtualbox seems like it might be better. Does the performance of the main OS go down? Or just the secondary one?
Oh, and is it hard? Like, are there any special installing steps or something?

sextobooting... How do you have 6? What are they?

With Virtualbox, there will be a severe performance penalty for both operating systems. You probably will not be running any games. Boot Camp will require you to reboot to switch between the two, but if you plan on doing anything serious within Windows, I doubt virtualization will work well enough.

And no, it is not very difficult. Boot Camp basically does everything for you.

Thats why Orwell is a sissy. computerlove, however, is a mans man. Well, as much as a sissy mac user can be.

odd how I always stumble upon your comments =P
btw, there's a new fuzzy, is that your clone?

Dont call yourself odd!



Thats my job.



Really? Nope. Not me. I could come up with a better name than fuzzy... erm.

he/she/it is called "fuzzylove", it could be our son!

Windows XP x64 Professional Edition, Windows Vista Ultimate x64, Windows Seven x64 Ultimate RTC, Ubuntu 9.10 x64, Fedora Core 10.0 x64, opensuse 11.1 x64. Granted some may need updating, but at this stage, I think virtual machine may be safer even with performance issues.
Once you feel comfortable with the installation setting up, then maybe sometime down the line a dedicated install for the secondary operating system

It has a lot of features that you won't find in bootcamp. One thing very useful is snapshot. After you setup the guest, create a snapshot. If anything happens afterwards (like a virus infection), just revert to that state and everything is clean.


Host performance aren't affect much except for the RAM the guest takes when it's running. When the guest is busy, obviously it has to take away CPU time from the host too. The same goes for all the I/O operations.

As for the guest, performance is always lower than it would have been as the only OS. The first reason is RAM. You need to reserve enough RAM to the host so that it's not starved, which means that the guest can only get what's left. If your machine has enough memory to spare, then this factor become less important. Another reason is the emulation of the virtual hardwares. VirtualBox has to pretend to be the hardwares talking to the guest's drivers. Installing the pass through drivers (guest additions) reduce this overhead a lot.

If you have enough RAM and have installed the guest drivers, then the performance should be very acceptable. If you want more details, ring 3 (application mode) performance hit is very low but ring 0 (kernel mode) overhead is still large. Newer CPUs have instructions (eg: VT-x) specifically for this situation but even then the hit is still considerable. So how much slower the guest is depends on the time it spent in ring 0 and that depends on the kind of thing you do in the guest.


It's not hard at all, just remember to install the guest additions. Most linux distro actually has that bundled already.

May be he/she/it is fuzzy's secret lover?

I found CPU to be a worse bottleneck than RAM when using Virtualbox, but then I have 4GB of RAM.

The OP mentioned wanting to play some games. Note that your graphics card will not be anywhere near its full capability within a virtual machine. I couldn't even run a chess program in Virtualbox because the graphics card couldn't handle it within virtualization. Now in Boot Camp it runs fine.

Yes, RAM isn't an issue if you have enough to spare and assign a sensible amount to the guest.


Sorry, didn't see that. For gaming, bootcamp will provide much better performance. VirtualBox only supports OpenGL passthrough at the moment. DirectX will need to use the reference renderer and is handled by the CPU. That is if your game actually start in this mode. I see why CPU is a bottleneck for you. btw what chess program is that, Fritz? I'm sure Fritz has a 2D mode and that run fine in VirtualBox.