Today, I installed WinXP, Linux (Ubuntu) and OSx86(10.5 iATKOS) on my PC. The process was a bit irritating, I made a lot of mistakes but I learnt a lot in the process, especially about partitioning your hard disk etc.
The whole abstract of the process is
1. Make 4 partitions on the disk
2. Install XP on one
3. Install Linux on other
4. Install Mac on 3rd
5. You are done !!!! THATS IT
I partitioned my harddisk using gparted. I must say that it is most reliable software around. I downloaded the iso, burnt it to a cd-rom and used it to first delete all the partitions on my disk. This was necessary because I wanted to create 4 primary partitions.
Okk, now a bit about the two types of partitions. You can create partitions on your disk which might be primary or logical.
So, it is the case that every hard disk has a fixed maximum number of primary partitions that can be created on it. On my PC's hard disk it is 4, and is the common figure. So that means that I can install 4 OSs like Mac OS X at max. I created 4 primary partitions.
One for linux, one windowsXP, one for mac and one to keep the data in common. This common drive I made as a extended partition. Okk, so the funda of extended partition is that you can create further "logical" partitions on it.
On this extended partition, I made two logical partitions, one to keep the common data and one for linux swap(512 MB).
Okk, so there a very important subtlety I want to point out. gParted gives you the option of formatting your hard disk in various formats. My conclusion is "DONT RELY ON THIS !!!"
The thing is if you format the windows partition as winXP and then while installing XP you might be allured to just quick format the disk. DONT DO THAT.
The NTFS partition created by gParted is not compatible with what XP expects. XP would install peacefully without cribbing but after you restart the computer you will see the unexpected
"Disk Error"
So, my advice is to always format (NOT quick format) the hard disk again while installing XP.
okk, now xp should boot normally. Just try once. Everything should work fine.
Now, install Linux. I guess there is already lot of material on this topic on the other side of net :P
Now comes the part of installing Mac.
I had the DVD of iATKOS v1.0i. Now the thing is there are lots of OS X86 floating around. I found installing this one the easiest.
Okk, so while installing it is the case that you should first use disk utilities and format your disk as HFS+ which I think translates to MAC extended, journaled, case sensitive.
Now install the darwin boot loader. The use of installing this boot loader is that it works exactly like your GRUB. It is again another boot loader. Long live the open source guys !!!
All this done, its time to just install MAC.
There is one more subtlety in installing MAC. You should know what system you have. So, while installing choose customize and and choose the appropriate drivers according to your computer. YOU MUST NOT JUST CHOOSE ALL THE DRIVERS !!
This done just shutdown mac after installing etc .. that is when you see the desktop for the first time. You should be seeing the grub on restart as usual. So now what remains is to add the entry for OSX in it. It will have the exactly the same entry as your Windows. Just that the "title" and "root (hd?,?)" shall be different.
Here is a screenshot of my OS X Leopard desktop
