What Non-Windows OS's are worth it? (If any.)

C

Cralex

Junior Member
Hi. I'm running Leopard on a MacBook and am going to get XP and parallels. My question is if I should invest any time/effort/disk space on another one of the supported guest OS's as well. Since this would be easier to answer if you knew more about me...

I am, naturally, getting XP because I want compatibility with various Windows Programs and Games. I plan to use XP with Coherence most of the time, since I'm a big time Mac user. I understand this is currently unavailable with other guest OS's. I'm pretty much a jack-of-all-trades computer user, although I have very little experience with actual programming and non-mainstream OSs. I also doubt I'll do much compiling with source code since I'll have both Leopard and XP working for me. I guess what I would mainly go for is a OS with advantages/differences from Leopard and XP. I was considering freebsd because it sounded neat, but I noticed that the compatible versions are a bit out-of-date.

So, that's where I am. Let me know if I need to clarify anything. I'm new to the whole Parallels scene. Thanks!
 
the Mac Intel already runs on UNIX under the Mac OS shell

so what killer apps do you ned to run?
or are you taking a degree in computer science?

Hugh W
 
Funny you should ask, I was actually going after computer science, but I think that I'd prefer something more general, like like IT stuff, to programming. (Then again, you never know.) Heck, I would not mind setting up parallels or something on a bunch of networked computers! Well, I have a pretty solid bace on my mac os for most things I do. I'll be using XP for some games, anything that I miight encounter in the future, and other misalanious programs that I have lying around at the moment, nothing that takes up a good chunk of resources or requires specialized knowledge for now. However, this could just be because I have not had time to explore other possabilities that an OS other then mac would bring. I may just stick with Mac and XP for now, since there isn't really anything specific I am looking for in other guest OS's for the time being. If there is some cool stuff out there, then I am unaware of it.
 
Doesn't sound like you *need* another OS. You've got XP, you've got OS X, and the whole Unix side of OS X to explore.

Things I find/have found useful:

* Windows 2000 for testing websites under pre-IE7 browsers, testing installers etc. - takes up less space than a second XP install.

* A lean, mean server-only Linux (e.g. a minimal Debian install) for developing/testing websites with Apache/PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL. Actually, all of those will run under OSX but its sometimes more convenient to have a sandbox to work in where a config change won't upset something on your Mac.

* Ubuntu for having a look at how Linux-on-the-desktop is coming along - (ans: very nicely, however, my personal prejudice is still Linux + Apache/PHP/Postgres/MySQL = now we're cooking with gas! but Linux + KDE/Gnome = kicking a dead whale along a beach).
 
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