Mac Vs Other systems

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Hello everybody,

I would like to buy a mac laptop, are all of them supporting to install other systems?

Thanks in advance
 

dtravis7


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Do you mean other Operating systems along side of OSX?
 
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I have used Virtual Box to install Linux which ever version along with OS X. Had no problems doing this works great. Not tried to install WinDoze but sure it would be easy as well.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Good point V6Pony, if you can get away with using a VM for the other OS' because you are not doing very intensive tasks, that's the best way.

Installing Windows/Linux in a VM created by VirtualBox (free) or VMWare Fusion/Parallels (paid) is just as easy as installing it on a native machine..
 
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Good point V6Pony, if you can get away with using a VM for the other OS' because you are not doing very intensive tasks, that's the best way.

Installing Windows/Linux in a VM created by VirtualBox (free) or VMWare Fusion/Parallels (paid) is just as easy as installing it on a native machine..

Only catch to using VB or VMWare is performance. Running Windows or Linux or any OS for that matter never runs very good in a VM. Very sluggish and often run into issues with the OS not being compatible with some of the virtualized hardware. Graphics for one is huge one, forget playing games in a VM. Dual booting or even triple booting is a much better solution IMHO, but don't try anything unless you have made a full systems backup.

Not going to go into steps on how to install. The Ubuntu documentation pages on the Ubuntu website already covers this in depth.

Hope this helps,
Joe
 

Raz0rEdge

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Only catch to using VB or VMWare is performance. Running Windows or Linux or any OS for that matter never runs very good in a VM. Very sluggish and often run into issues with the OS not being compatible with some of the virtualized hardware. Graphics for one is huge one, forget playing games in a VM. Dual booting or even triple booting is a much better solution IMHO, but don't try anything unless you have made a full systems backup.

Not going to go into steps on how to install. The Ubuntu documentation pages on the Ubuntu website already covers this in depth.

Hope this helps,
Joe

I'd actually suggest the opposite. The latest versions of VMWare Fusion and Parallels are VERY good at supporting all applications, even games. They've been steadily increasing their support of graphical games.

I know people who use AutoCAD and other GPU/CPU/memory intensive applications through Parallels without any problem.

I use VMWare Fusion to run a Linux development machine without any hiccups or performance problems. Granted I have a i7 iMac with 16GB of memory, so my VM is loaded with 2 cores and 6GB of memory.

The convenience of starting/stopping/resuming/suspending the VM whenever I want totally outweighs any performance loss IMO.

As I stated in my response, if all you want to do is run games at the highest possible settings and so on, then you have no choice but to run Windows natively on the Mac.

But for anything else, I recommend virtualization first and Boot Camp only because the VM doesn't fit you particular use case..
 

cwa107


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I'd actually suggest the opposite. The latest versions of VMWare Fusion and Parallels are VERY good at supporting all applications, even games. They've been steadily increasing their support of graphical games.

I don't know about games, but I have been running Windows 7 with the full Aero interface on VMWare Fusion for a number of years now. It's seamless. On the rare occasion I've run a game there, it's worked fine - though nothing too intensive.

I personally like VMWare because I work with it in a datacenter environment. We have massive VMWare clusters that house dozens of servers. These servers host desktop environments for thin client users. We frequently have 25+ users on a virtual server, running Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 and performance is very good. With that said, the underlying technology is very similar between VMWare products - and it's incredibly robust when configured properly.

Too often, I think people run VMs with minimal "hardware" allocated. Given plenty of RAM (I typically allocate 4GB to Win7), it runs quite well. And just about any Linux distro will run at near native speeds in Fusion. If you can live without the Compiz/Beryl eye-candy, you'll never need to install it natively.
 
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Can we do a partition to install 3 OS, so I would like to use Mac, Win7 and Ubuntu, and sharing files between them, is that possible?

I tried to use Win Vista and Ubuntu on a PC, and I created a partition to share files between them, so if I would like to have any file, I can access that partition where I stored all my files.

Which Mac OS is the best?
 

vansmith

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well, the video is not clear, since I am not familiar with Mac, I do not know how to bring options ( where the guy was clicking,..) and so on
 

chscag

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well, the video is not clear, since I am not familiar with Mac, I do not know how to bring options ( where the guy was clicking,..) and so on

It's probably better then to first buy a Mac, learn how to use it, and then decide if you wish to run other operating systems on it. Chances are once you learn how to use your new Mac, you may not want to run Windows or Linux on it.
 
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I usually use Linux, but sometime I run Win for some software, however, I need Mac for design and some other applications, such as programming iPhone Apps

A normal PC can do the job, but while traveling, my PC get OFF in 2 hours of charging, however, a Mac have a long battery life
 
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chas_m

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Chscag's advice still stands: "it's probably best to first buy a Mac and learn how to use it," even if you are sure you will put other OSes on it.
 

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