4 ms·
This is a bit of an unconventional approach, but here's my plan for when I buy a Macbook Air over the summer: * Keep OS X / X11 * Install a command line Ubunt
by buu700 15y ago
This is a bit of an unconventional approach, but here's my plan for when I buy a Macbook Air over the summer:
* Keep OS X / X11
* Install a command line Ubuntu VM in Parallels
* Set up the VM as an SSH server and configure public/private key authentication
* Configure any necessary filesystem sharing in Parallels
* Configure OS X to run your Ubuntu VM on startup in headless mode (background / non-graphical)
* Replace your OS X bashrc with 'ssh -Y localhost'; this will cause any terminal you open to run a Linux shell, with the capability to open graphical applications (I'll personally be using TotalTerminal; I'm a sucker for Quake-style terminals)
In the end, you pretty much have the best of both worlds. You get an Apple-polished day-to-day experience (with no hacking required for things like multitouch gestures), with all the power of Linux also at your fingertips.
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Though, if that doesn't sound like your thing (or you just really want to be rid of OS X), my original plan before I had that idea was just to go with my standard Kubuntu. Kubuntu is an incredibly polished KDE distro in my opinion (despite its naysayers), and from what I can tell KDE is the only desktop environment which really rivals OS X (except maybe Unity, which I haven't played much with). Given the latest release, now is a better time than ever to get rolling with a *buntu.
Also, no matter which distro you choose, if you're using an Air it seems you'll need this: http://code.google.com/p/touchegg/ http://code.google.com/p/touchegg/
- bluehat 15y agoPlease do write up how your Air holds up to that kind of abuse! If the system doesn't cry (Airs don't have a lot of hardware in them) this sounds quite excellent. To be honest though, I don't totally understand how this headless Linux runs graphical Linux in your mac without going into the X11/Lion rage area.
- buu700 15y agoAbuse? A headless vm running in the background is hardly a major drain on resources... You'll have to partition off a slice of RAM (half a gig to a gig should suffice), and the CPU will have a little more work to do, but realistically there won't be a significant performance difference. The magic here is SSH and X forwarding, which basically runs the non-graphical side of the application in the vm and the graphical side in the X client. Here's an example of X forwarding an application remotely: http://buu700.com/xforward http://buu700.com/xforward If you decide to use this approach, let me know if you need any help with anything.
- bluehat 15y agoYes, however, maybe this is just me, but Lion wrecked a lot of standard Linux stuff running in X11 (for example, the selector tool in GIMP, it just doesn't work) and under this setup I don't see how you are getting around those issues unless you plan to run OSX Snow Leopard...
- buu700 15y agoThe point is that it's all running in Linux, not OS X.
- ixacto 15y agoI was actually thinking about doing this with a hackintosh now that Ivy Bridge is out.