I got a Mac Pro…to run Linux and Windows

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It’s a dual quad-core Intel 3.0GHz Xeon machine (that’s 8 cores!) with 8 GB of RAM and 1TB of disk space and an NVIDIA Geforce 7300GT! I also have 2 new 20″ widescreen monitors attached to it. My guess is that Apple is eating a substantial amount of the cost of these computers to get them in the hands of people like me. While, maybe people who hate Apple less than I do. Actually, I doubt there is anyone who hates Apple more than I do. But luckily I’ve got it to dual-boot Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP64. We have another identical workstation running OSX, so I plan to do some benchmarking at some point. Here’s how to configure a Mac Pro to dual boot Linux/Windows:

  • Do not try to install 32-bit operating systems. I had fun trying to do this on a computer with 8GB of RAM.
  • Don’t read anything from Apple about dual booting. Especially don’t use Boot Camp – it’s worthless. It seems like the Mac Pro is set up like pretty much any other computer running BIOS. Apple tries to scare you into believing that your computer will blow up and destroy the world if you don’t have Mac OSX and Boot Camp installed. Don’t listen to them. The only real difference is that you have to hold down ‘c’ to boot off the CD. That, and you need a paper clip to open the CD tray because Apple doesn’t believe in putting eject buttons on their computers.
  • Install a 64-bit version of Windows first. I found it useful to boot with the Ubuntu LiveCD and create partitions with gparted. The Windows XP installer seemed to get confused when I had to hard disks in the machine, but when I removed the disk that Windows was not being installed on, everything worked just fine.
  • You will need to download and install Intel Pro1000 and Nvidia drivers in order to get networking and graphics acceleration in Windows. I have not tested sound yet.
  • Next install the latest 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.04. There is a lot of active discussion on their message boards, and the hardware support for the installer seems better than Debian for Macs. It will install Grub, and you should be able to boot without any problems. You may encounter some cryptic errors related to reading the CD which seem to be related to the model of the CD-ROM drive that came in your Mac Pro. There are a couple different hardware versions that have shipped, and some work while others don’t.
  • Currently, getting sound in Ubuntu requires manually compiling the newest version of ALSA. The packaged Nvidia graphics drivers will work, however.

    • Franconia Notch Backpacking

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    Last weekend 5 of us (me, Heather, Courtney, Shannon, Bill) went on a 3 day, 2 night backpacking trip in the Franconia/Pemigewasset area of New Hampshire. We did a loop that went along the Thoreau Falls trail to the Seacliff trail, up to Mt Guyot, and then along the Bondcliff trail and out to the Lincoln Woods visitor center. The hike was 30+ miles in 3 days. Although it was July, we had temperatures in the 40’s at night, and some rain on the 2nd day. Luckily we were able to wait out most of the rain at the Guyot campsite lean-to. We got some good views the 3rd day as we traversed the Bondcliff trail. I brought along my GPS and I have a tracklog, but I haven’t had time to do anything with it. I will at some point.

    Last October I did a similar 3 day loop with Bill and Amy. We went along the Franconia ridge trail that summits Mt Flume, Liberty, Lincoln, Lafayette, and Garfield. I took some slide photographs, which I later scanned. Unfortunately I had one too many filters on my camera which resulted in some unexpected vignetting in the corners of some of the pictures. The pictures also have a nice 70’s look to them since they are scanned slides.

    Google Maps driving directions to Europe

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    Last weekend when my sisters were visiting, I used Google Maps to get driving directions from Boston to Manchester, MA. However, I was ambiguous about which Manchester, and Google maps gave me driving directions from Boston to Manchester, England. I’ll let that sink in. The directions tell you to go Long Wharf and then swim across the Atlantic Ocean to France, and take a slight right. It even allocates 29 days of time for the swim, which is 3,462 miles. I’m not a swimmer, but to complete this leg you’d have to average 5mph, which sounds impossible. I’ve been looking for other places that return crazy directions, but unfortunately it seems like you only get to go swimming if your driving between the US and Europe.