[Cialug] Small and quiet Linux box suggestions

[Don Ellis]

When I upgraded my hardware from a vintage 2006 MacBook to a 2011 MacBook
Pro, I was surprised that I could run Windows XP as fast (or faster) with 2
cores on the MBP than in BootCamp on the old MacBook. I have found times
when VMWare works better, and times when Parallels works better, and I keep
a current copy of VirtualBox for comparison. All of them integrate pretty
will with the Mac desktop.

Re: wasting space on the other distros, each of the virtualization packages
allows dynamic allocation, so you can allocate a large disk, but only use
what actually gets installed.

Finally, [with a little speed penalty] I prefer to install most of my test
distros on an external drive with Firewire 800 connection, to avoid
thrashing and heating my internal drive. A newer MacBook with USB3, or a
Thunderbolt-connected drive should run much faster. That said, I do keep
several potentially high usage OSes on my internal drive for fast execution
and permanent access.

--Don Ellis


On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 12:17 PM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

...

That said, Don is right on the money. VMWare Fusion (not free, but very
> reasonably priced) runs Linux amazingly well. Ubuntu 12.04 desktop[1] ran
> better in VMWare than it did in dual boot mode due to the fact that VMware
> interpreted mouse gestures and translated them to the OS. The lack of
> noticeable performance impact is truly amazing. My non-scientific opinion
> is that apmd works better in a VM than it does on bare metal.
>
> [1] I never successfully made the jump past 12.04 on the desktop
>
> --
> Matthew Nuzum
> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter
>
>
> ♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫
>