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Some facts
Partitioning Schemes - MBR vs GPT
First some facts. For a (very) long time PC hard drives have been formatted with
the MBR (Master Boot Record) scheme. This has drawbacks and it's being
superceded with the GUID aka GTP scheme (GUID==Globally Unique Identifier,
GPT==GUID Partition Table). So, the Mini comes with a MBR partitioned disk with
one big partition which we want to split up to take several OSs. However...
MacOSX will now (Snow Leopard) not install onto a MBR partition - the installer
insists on GPT. Re-partitioning as MBR would destroy the existing XP install
and... XP will not install onto a GPT partitioned disk! XP simply is not able to
understand GPT. So, all seems lost. However...
MacOSX will run from a MBR partition. The trick then is to get it on there.
That's one thing that's explained in this guide - essentially to install it to a
GUID USB stick and then to copy that install to an MBR partition in the HDD.
Bootloaders - Grub vs Chameleon
To get the PC to load the OS of your choice, you need a bootloader. These are
essential and pretty mysterious pieces of software - mysterious to me anyway. In
essence, if you're used to Linux dual-booting with Windows you'll be used to
LILO (the LI-nux LO-ader) for years gone by, and Grub (GR-and Unified
Bootloader) in more recent times. However for MacOSX the Chameleon bootloader is
the non-Apple state of the art, and very nice it is too.
The trick described in this guide is to set Chameleon as the PC bootloader,
providing an attractive graphical menu for Windows, MacOSX and Linux. Grub is
used on the Linux partition only to complete the Linux load as a hand-off from
Chameleon. (Note that Grub thinks it can load MacOSX, but I couldn't get that to
work so I've not documented it here).
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