Comments on: Advice Please: Running Ubuntu On My Mac

By: Simplicious

Simplicious — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:02:39 +0000

You may want two technologically completely different solutions:

1) dual-boot Mac OSX and Ubuntu so that you have a native version of both.

2) use a virtual machine for short bursts of Ubuntu while using Mac OSX.

By: Ashish

Ashish — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:19:41 +0000

I use virtualbox for running Ubuntu,Opensolaris and BSD on my Macbook. It’s very easy and fast to work with. I was using VMware server on my HP desktop. But now both are running virtualbox. Give a shot to this amazing software from Sun Microsystems.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:10:29 +0000

@Q Hartman:

I run virtualbox on about 10 Ubuntu boxes. Speed improvements are easily evident in every case. I switched many from vmware.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:44:49 +0000

Richard @1: I will research VirtualBox a bit.

Q Hartman Q2: I want to do more than run Ubuntu apps in Mac OS X. I want both Max OS X and Ubuntu platforms to live on my PowerBook, so that I can “live” in Ubuntu for a few hours and then “live” in Mac OS X for a few hours. But I also want to jump seamlessly between them at a moment’s notice.

Basically, whenever I blog about Ubuntu and write about Ubuntu apps, Ubuntu industry players, etc., I want to make sure I’m in the Ubuntu world. I have a Dell desktop with Ubuntu. But I travel a lot with my MacBook and I’m not ready to fully give up Mac OS X.

So, I figure it’s time to have both Ubuntu and Mac OS X fully available on my notebook. I’m going to give VirtualBox, Fusion and Parallels a closer look.

By: Q Hartman

Q Hartman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:27:13 +0000

Well, what are you going for exactly? Do you want to run Ubuntu apps while in OSX, or do you just want to have a dedicated Ubuntu environment available? Parallels is supposedly pretty nice, but I’ve never used it. Fusion I have used, and it is pretty sweet. The ability to seamlessly have Linux or Windows Apps on your OSX desktop is very nice.

It will come down to taste though I think. Both have demos available. Try them both out and then write up a comparison!

@Richard: What are you doing with your machines? I’ve used a variety of virtualization systems and I’ve never noticed an appreciable difference in performance among them unless I venture into corner-case areas where they are known to perform poorly.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:47:44 +0000

Neither solution will give you good speed results. I would recommend VirtualBox. I switched about 6 months ago from vmware and have never looked back.