Boot Camp or Virtualization?

[shearer4]

Here's my set up and resources:
1. 1 MacPro late 2006, Dual XEON 2.66;
2. 3 Sata disk drives; 250, 500 and 1Terra, plus a couple external FW hard drives and one USB hard drive.
3. 16 Gigs of Ram on board
4. NVIDIA GT 2300, 256 Mb Vid/Ram
5. OS X 10.7.5 - Right or wrong, this machine will not run Mavericks or even Mountain Lion. Architecture is supposedly to blame?
6. I have Parallels 6 and Windows Vista on this machine for work/business related stuff. It works fine. I have the Windows VM on a separate volume. I won't need this much longer and will archive all the files. It's really just an accounting issue.
7. I use this Mac OS for some important stuff, but it's all backed up on externals plus DropBox holds the really important stuff. Plus I have MacBookPro I can look back to running DevonThinkPro via Dropbox which is where all the REALLY important stuff is.

So; Yes, I have a lot of resources. Why am I installing Unix? Because I'm recently retired, in good shape and have been interested in computers since DOS. So, this is something new to learn to keep the brain active and working. Hey; it's free! Lumosity costs $10/month!

Question; should I Dual Boot (BootCamp) into either Mac OS or Unix? i.e. Ubuntu. Means; moving my main/home drive to another volume, I think? I use CCC to clone my current Macintosh Disk to another volume. So, not at all difficult. I can and have booted from this drive.

Should I continue to use Vbox? It works. I have Ubuntu 12LTs on it and it works fine, if a little sluggish. I also have Mint 16 on it, which is much quicker but, of course lighter with less functionality.

I'm spoiled! My MacPro although not capable of running the latest Mac OS, is stupendously faster than my 2010 Mac Book and my work provided Lenovo Thinkpad, by A LOT. I am so used to sitting down at the Pro and getting just immediate reactions to inputs. Maybe I need to slow down?

Or, maybe I can install Unix directly on my Mac Pro with all those resources and have at it?

What do you think? All advice welcome. I have googled until my eyes dried out. There's a lot of advice out there.

What do you think, based on experiences if possible?

AS

[baabsaget]

I would dual boot. (what you call boot camp)
On my macbook pro, the procedure basically went like:

1. Install rEFInd
2. Make space for the ubuntu install by partitioning
3. make an ubuntu live USB with unetbootin
4. Install Ubuntu in EFI mode OR install ubuntu in legay mode
5. Install all necessary drivers

I can post detailed instructions if you'd like.

By the way, OS X is actually closer to UNIX than Ubuntu is.

[shearer4]

[QUOTE]By the way, OS X is actually closer to UNIX than Ubuntu is./QUOTE]

Yes and no. I recognize the OSX is built on Unix, but there are differences. For me, the importance of my data on my OSX User Folders is beyond description (hackers take note). So, I am trying to do everything I can to keep and other instances of Unix separate, and on different volumes. I just want to experiment and learn. Learning Unix on OSX is like abide with training wheels. Running Ubuntu, Mint and possible others is a new experience. That's really all there is to this.

So; you recommend that I use Boot Camp, Apple's assistant program for setting up a dual boot system on a single volume. Or IOW you have had good experience with dual booting into OSX and Ubuntu on a macbook?

That's good to know. I had a lot of trouble with burning either DVDs or a USB stick and ending up with a bootable Ubuntu .iso disk? Not sure what has caused this, but I will look at unetbootin, if I have that right? Thanks for your help. Very good!

[1clue]

I recommend VMs. That way you get to use as many operating systems as you want or have room for all at the same time, and you can copy/paste between.

Using multiple boot, you have to save whatever you're doing (related to the current project or not), shut down, boot the other OS, open the file (hopefully file formats are compatible enough) and do whatever you were going to do with it, save it, shut down, boot back to the original OS, open the file again, try it out to see if it works, lather, rise, repeat if necessary. Or, just copy/paste.

You have plenty of room for a couple VMs. Parallels works nicely for Mac, you can also use VMware and maybe a few others.

Regarding Mac OS X being closer to UNIX than ubuntu: Yes and yes. Mac OS is a fully licensed UNIX. Meaning it inherits at least some source code from the original. Linux is supposedly completely rewritten, although some FreeBSD code is in there and there was a legal tussle over that a few years ago.

That said, Mac OS X runs a whole lot of Open Source software, and if you put XQuartz on you can use the GUI stuff too.

I understand and respect what you're saying about segregation of your OSX data, but let's try to be correct here. Starting off calling Linux UNIX is going to become the main point of any thread you make that correlation in. It's legally, technically and philosophically incorrect, where calling your Mac UNIX is completely correct.

You could say UN*X and people will get it. That's common practice as a reference to UNIX-like operating systems and would be correct in your context too.

[shearer4]

Thank you for all this background and the recommendations. I am guilty of not fully understanding the difference between talking about UNIX and Linux. I knew there were differences in both licensing and code, but was not aware of how sharp a line that could be. Now I know. Thanks. What I was trying to say was, Apple had so successfully developed OSX GUI to the point where one could easily forget there is even a terminal. And, for most folks, that's the whole point. In the little bit of experimenting I have done with Ubuntu I see that learning some commands and running certain things on the command line is more efficient.

After reading your post and some experiences others have had and also going a lot of searching and tweaking, I've decided the best way to go is what I have set up now that is, using VirtualBox and running VMs. I've been able to get Ubuntu 12.04.3 /64 running pretty nicely on my system in VBox.

I have Parallels 6, but it doesn't seem to play well with Ubuntu, especially when it comes to installing Parallels tools. But, that's another thread for some other time.

Thanks again. I've learned quite a bit from your response.

[1clue]

Also, a whole lot of Open Source software runs on OS X. You'll want to install XQuartz if you don't already have it, (the easiest X server install you'll ever do, pretty much zero configuration) and you might want to get homebrew for mac. Which is a package manager of sorts, to get a lot of open source stuff on your system. You'll want to read the web page so you understand what you're getting.

Most Mac users don't know about Terminal. It doesn't show up in their app list, most of them don't look in the utilities folder, and they have no idea why anyone would want to type anything into a terminal when they can click. That's fine. But FWIW if Mac OS X wasn't UNIX underneath I wouldn't be running it.

[shearer4]

I am looking at it right now. Not sure where to get Hombrew, but I will figure that out. I know I had it as part of playing with Ruby awhile back. Should be able to do

sudo -apt get homebrew Right?

Thanks.

AS

[1clue]

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew

It's not on Linux, it's on Mac. Read the docs to get it installed, once you do it's like apt-get for the mac.

It's also not so selective as apt-get, you sort of get a bunch of stuff by default.

[shearer4]

Ok. I got Quartz, Xtools and Homebrew by searching the web. Things did not all go well, but no problems. I get an error message or two, so kept working on those. Finally, I believe I got the latest version of XTools command line tools I can run. Remember I'm stuck in 10.7.5 due to my processor and bus.

So; now I have Quartz, X11 Command line. What to do now? I've read as much as I can. Need to go to sleep now, but will check back email in the morning for Ubuntu posts.

This is cool. Thanks again.

[1clue]

OK so now you can:

1. ssh -X <your_linux_box> and then run X apps like firefox or synaptic using your mac as a workstation.
2. gimp on your Mac (assuming you installed it) and get gimp running on your mac.

You also have a lot of Open Source linux commands, and you can install more.

So XQuartz is the xorg server for Mac OS. For X, client and server are sort of backwards from what you would think. The server is where you sit and type, and the client is the app you're running, which could be on your local computer or somewhere else.

XTools is X-related tools.

Homebrew is a bunch of tools that you would use if you were on Linux, and which you might find handy on your mac.

So what we did is expand your Mac's brain a little bit and allowed it to run some of the things you're running on Linux. I've been using this stuff for years now, it doesn't hurt the rest of your OS.