Hello all, I have a very general opinion question. I have Parallels for Mac and windows XP installed on my macbook and I mainly use it because a version of Matlab isn't available for the intel macs yet. Also, some rare cases I need to open up windows so i can use internet explorer to open up some stupid website that only supports internet explorer. Anyways, I have absolutely no experience with linux besides from doing some reading online about it and I am very interested in getting a linux partition and play around. The problem is that I am completely confused with all of the distributions out there and have no idea where to start. My main interest is a distribution that I would be able to run some of these windows programs that I might need every once in a while as well as Matlab. I read that Linux XP can run windows programs??? Any advice for a beginner linuxer? Also, if you have any other advantages that a Linux distribution has over Mac OS X or just some neat little things that Linux can do and Mac OS X can't that would be a nice place to start as well. Thanks in advance Guillermo
Quite a lot of popular free/open source software associated with Linux is also available for Mac - e.g. Gimp (graphics/photo), Inkscape (vector graphics), NeoOffice (version of OpenOffice), MySQL/PostgreSQL (relational databases) - some as proper OSX packages, others can be compiled from source using one of the open source package managers "fink" or "macports". Google is your friend. OSX already includes Apache (web server), PHP/Perl/Python (web scripting) Samba (WIndows-style file sharing) and the GNU C/C++ compilers (if you install the dev tools). However, a Linux VM is probably a good way to try out open source software. As far as distributions, Ubuntu is probably a good place to start as any. There are ways of running (some) Windows applications under Linux - WINE (free) or Crossover (commercial) but unless you want to dump your XP installation, I'd suggest that trying to run Windows apps under WINE on a VM on your Mac is somewhat massochistic... Currently, Parallels support for Linux is not perfect - there are no "Parallels tools for linux". The main downside of this is that, if you click in the VM it "grabs" the mouse and you have to do Ctrl-alt to get it back. Plus there is no "shared folders" feature - although you can get the same effect by setting up SMB or NFS file sharing. Honest opinion: I use Linux for "server" applications (web pages, databases, file sharing, EMAIL, networking) for which it is excellent, but I wouldn't choose to use it for "desktop" work if I had the option of using Windows or OSX instead. Don't get me wrong: linux desktop stuff is perfectly usable, getting better all the time, and incredible for free - but (sorry!) still clunky compared to OSX/Windows - but don't let that stop you giving it a go.
My experience with Linux confirms 'itsapead' views, although I could not pretend to have any real level of experience with it. I did try Simply Mepis from a Linux mag cover, quite good and interesting , but really could not see any real virtue in using as 'home' user. I started to experience shutdown issues, and started to get funny error messages...in the end after repeated installations, and further problems, I gave it away, for the time being anyway. Using OS X makes you appreciate just how good it is, compared to what else is out there. I have installed XP Home and Vista beta, for fun and the occasional need to access Windows, but if I am totally honest with myself, all I need is OS X!!
Hey Coolmemin, I was in the same boat a few months ago. The good thing about Parallels is that you can try a few distros. I am currently running Fedora 6 and Suse 10.1, while taking a Linux+ class. they both work well. there are images available for download if you search this site. Get the distros, a good linux+ pdf and you will be on your way L-Key
For using matlab, I found that Fedora Core 5 works fine. Because of linux peculiarities, you do have to change a grub script to get more than about 600MB of RAM assigned. It is also correct that you cannot drag and drop form mac to linux and that linux captures the cursor (until you release it). You can have full access to Mac files and firewire hard disks by logging into your Mac OS from Linux under network places.
so if I'm using ubuntu(this is the one I'm playing around with now), how do I access my Mac OS X files?
On the Mac side, enabling Windows Sharing from the Sharing Preference Panel is the quickest way to share files between OS X and various non-Windows operating systems running in Paralells. You will need to speifically re-type your password for each user in OS X enabled for Windows Sharing. Other users have enabled NFS, which is arguably better, but this would require a bit more effort on your part, and not something I would reccomend for laptop users.
