This is all absolutely fine, but poses a problem when you then install Linux – the Mac will boot Linux in EFI mode, and then, when installing, Linux clobbers Windows’ bootloader, thinking that Windows is installed in EFI mode! GRUB (Linux Mint’s bootloader) is also unable to load Windows like this, so that’s a second problem to solve. Doing a standard Boot Camp setup with macOS and Windows works just fine, but the caveat is that this installs Windows in BIOS/CSM mode. However, this Mac uses EFI 1.1 firmware, instead of the much more ubiquitous and better-supported EFI 2.0/UEFI spec. You’d think the answer would be yes, and you’d be right for more modern Intel Macs (probably). Can’t you just use Boot Camp for tri-booting? This isn’t a specifically Linux-oriented post, but it does fit with the sort-of miscellaneous hopefully-interesting things I post about here. ![]() ![]() At first I was going to make a howto, but the process ended up being so bizarre and confusing that instead I’m just going to write about the experience. A little while ago I decided to try tri-booting macOS Big Sur, Windows 10, and Linux Mint 20.3 on an older Late 2013 MacBook Pro in order to do some performance and battery life comparisons (coming soon!).
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