VirtualBox -- Mac OS X instead of Windows?

[Tom_ZeCat]

I'll soon be installing VirtualBox. The main reason I still use Windows is because of a few applications that are not available for Linux which don't run well under WINE. One is Final Draft, a word processor specifially designed for writing screenplays and stage plays. The Linux offerings for script writing programs just didn't cut it. CeltX is decent for screenwriting, but for stage plays it's terrible. Its stage play template isn't the standard Samual French one. Trelby has no stage play template. So I'm sticking with Final Draft.

Quicken is the other app I need to stick to. I tried KMyMoney. I have to admit it's pretty good. It has a lot of the same features as Quicken. However, it doesn't do the online reconciling, at least not yet. So I'm sticking to Quicken, at least for now, while I'll keep my eye on how KMyMoney develops.

Photoshop is another one. Gimp is pretty darn good, and I'll likely use it for a lot of things. However, Photoshop is the heavy hitter for photography, and there are a ton of plug-ins available for it.

The one thing I noticed about all my must-have Windows apps: There are Mac versions for all of them. So maybe I should install Mac OS X (whatever the most recent one is) instead of Windows under VirtualBox. OS X is Unix-based like Linux and is far more resistant to malware than Windows. Mac is a big enough market that there are usually Mac versions for most commercial software.

Has anyone here installed Mac OS under VirtualBox? Do you like the results? Of course if I want to I could install Windows also under it in case something comes up that I need and neither Linux nor Mac will do. But it's hard to think of anything. Mac OS will run Final Draft, Quicken, and Photoshop. My other must-have Windows program, Treepad Business, runs perfectly under WINE.

I may end up never using Windows at all.

[sithlord48]

Quicken is the other app I need to stick to. I tried KMyMoney. I have to admit it's pretty good. It has a lot of the same features as Quicken. However, it doesn't do the online reconciling, at least not yet. So I'm sticking to Quicken, at least for now, while I'll keep my eye on how KMyMoney develops.

There are others like skrooge and GnuCash that may provide online reconsile for you. if neither of them work have you looked into quicken on wine? the appdb page list many versions as sliver or better

Photoshop is another one. Gimp is pretty darn good, and I'll likely use it for a lot of things. However, Photoshop is the heavy hitter for photography, and there are a ton of plug-ins available for it.

there is not much (if anything) photoshop can do that gimp can not. some of the plugins may have alternatives others you may be able to use directly with gimp (this used to work for some plugins not sure if it still does) Not to mention there are also other program like krita, and digikam depending on what your using photoshop for exactly. Or Photoshop via wine the appdb page list many versions as sliver or better recent ones are gold.

Has anyone here installed Mac OS under VirtualBox? Do you like the results?

i have run mac os in virtual machine . Not virtual box i never could get it to work and had to use VMware preinstalled image.i didn't really test much on the machine i only used to for building software. after i downloaded the 2GB of crap i needed for make (thanks xcode..) i just would open a terminal wget my stuff then build it so i can't really comment much on the proformace for things like photoshop.

[Simon]

Tom wouldn't that mean getting copies of your software for the Mac OS X and buying it all over again? Sounds like a costly solution to me.

Have you tried all the WINE versions available or is the problem beyond a version issue? I use WINE for a few of my games. Everything productive I do through the Linux applications.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Tom wouldn't that mean getting copies of your software for the Mac OS X and buying it all over again? Sounds like a costly solution to me.

Have you tried all the WINE versions available or is the problem beyond a version issue? I use WINE for a few of my games. Everything productive I do through the Linux applications.

If you already have a Windows license for an app, most companies will cut you a deal.

I've used the latest version of WINE with Final Draft with no success. I'd doubt prior versions would work any better. Others who've reviewed Final Draft at Wine HQ have had the same problems I've had. The other option I guess would be to use that proprietary WINE, I think it's called Crossover.

[sithlord48]

crossover is WINE.. there is little to no difference at least for compatibility of apps. you should run your progam in the command line because you might be missing something it needs like some DLL. running from the command line will print these errors so you can maybe install stuff thats missing preventing your program from running. althougth the current version is listed as Garbage in the appdb so you might be hosed that one right now but the previous version is listed as GOLD (v7)

http://appdb.winehq.org

remember the appdb it can be useful

[dbaker]

I've been a Mac user all my life and have just recently decided to switch to Linux once my laptop dies. Problem is, there's some amazing Mac software not available for Linux which I'd like to be able to continue using, so this thread is interesting to me.

I wanted to run Mac OS as a VM so I made a disk image from my Tiger install DVD, but couldn't get it to work in Virtualbox. Does it run ok as a VM? It might be worth looking into VMware if this is at all possible. I have found 'replacements' for almost all my expensive Mac software in Linux, but they aren't as nice and there are compatibility issues with opening files from the Mac program in the Linux one and vice versa. It's just going to get impractically complicated.

I'm running Kubuntu as a VM on my iMac atm, just to test it out. The plan is to have Kubuntu on a new laptop with my favorite version of Mac OS X running on a VM, but the only way for me to test this out before I actually GET a new laptop is to have recursive VMs...which so far I haven't succeeded in doing even with lightweight Linux distros.

[SteveRiley]

The plan is to have Kubuntu on a new laptop with my favorite version of Mac OS X running on a VM, but the only way for me to test this out before I actually GET a new laptop is to have recursive VMs...which so far I haven't succeeded in doing even with lightweight Linux distros.

While my Mac knowledge wouldn't amount to a shadow of a zero, I know a thing or three about virtualization. Describe how you've configured your VM and your VM-within-VM. Maybe I can help.

[dbaker]

I don't really know what to tell you; I followed an online tutorial to set up the first one (I can't remember what tutorial, unfortunately) and then just memorised the process, and it's kind of automatic now. Would listing the info that shows up in the virtualbox manager (general, system, display etc) be helpful?

[sithlord48]

@clbaker is your tiger disk for PPC chips if so it wont' work in virtual box. Mac os Generally doesn't work on virtual box i had to use vmware for mac os. do you have examples of the software for mac os you wish to run there is most likley an equlivent version for linux. if you want mac os then keep a machine with mac os or dual boot

general ramblings....
as a long time user of many oses i just don't see the apeal to mac os X to me its crippled unix. im not saying i hate apple and all that im just saying mac os X has never been an os i like to use. every version seams to be more crippled then the last.lately since 10.8 every task seams like a chore. makes me miss Os9 becaues at least you could get things done with applescript in that version. that being said i still maintain a mac to build software that i write, for convenince i have tried several times to do VM building but it never works out very well.

[dbaker]

I don't like the new Mac OS's; that's why I want to use Tiger. It's Intel, not PPC. What is the VMware program you reccomend? I googled it and was so confused I couldn't even figure out what I needed.

There are 3 programs it's really important for me to keep: Sibelius, GarageBand and Poser.

There are some things about MuseScore, the Linux equivelant of Sibelius, which I actually like better, but they're minor. One of the most important things for me with regards to music notation software is having a good sound library, as I use it to export audio. Despite downloading a number of different 'high-quality' soundfonts I am yet to find anything for MuseScore that can even begin to compare with the default Sibelius sound library. I thought that since I will always have at least one machine with Mac OS, I could write my scores in MuseScore (I prefer to write music on my laptop) and when they were finished, transfer them to the Mac running Sibelius for better-sounding MIDI. But it turns out the Sibelius/MuseScore compatibility isn't that great, and it would be really frustrating and complicated to have to switch between them. I'd much rather do everything in Sibelius.

Garageband comes with a heap of amazing preinstalled sounds, which are even better than anything available in Sibelius. I haven't been able to even try out any of the Linux MIDI sequencers because they all seem to require Jack audio, which for some reason clashes with the MIDI driver used by MuseScore and stops it from working. At the moment, I just want MuseScore to work, and it's too much hassle trying to figure out what's wrong with the audio drivers in order to try out programs I probably won't like as much as GarageBand anyway. I'd like to persevere with this area but it might require a different setup running as a host OS on completely different hardware anyway, so I'm reluctant to spend a lot of effort on it in the VM only to have to do everything again differently once I get a new computer. And I still doubt I'll be able to find a sound library anything like as good as what comes with GarageBand (not to mention the compatibility issues of opening GB files...which I assume is impossible.)

Poser is a 3D content environment, and sadly I'm probably going to lose it anyway regardless of what OS I run, because it was a digital download and I lost the installer (my only option would be to upgrade, which I'm considering doing.) I hardly use it anymore but it was so expensive and it's a pretty extraordinary piece of software and something I love to play around with now and then (it satisfies my need for visual design and coding at the same time.) I have a heap of content I've purchased or created for this program and as far as I'm aware, content created for Poser can only be used in Poser, so I don't think there is any alternative here.

Poser is the only one of my Mac OS-specific programs I'd consider running solely on the iMac. The others I very specifically need on my laptop.

EDIT: oh and quick update....today I finally managed to run Xubuntu inside Kubuntu inside Mac OS. I needed to assign half my RAM to the guest OS and half of THAT to the guest-guest OS. It's still slow but it works.

[sithlord48]

wow Poser !!! i have not used that software in a long time.

[SteveRiley]

I can tell you than VM-within-VM is always going to have performance problems. While the first VM can often address certain hardware components directly, the second VM can't because the first VM doesn't provide a direct equivalent of addressable hardware. The second VM will run in a mode where all devices are emulated. There is a fair amount of thunking in this configuration, which requires copying lots of pages in memory multiple times. You won't be able to run accelerated video in a configuration like this either.

The VMware software you'll want to try is VMware Player. If you plan to install it on Kubuntu, and if your Linux kernel is 3.7 or higher, you will need to apply some patches. Search the forum here, we have documented this.

[dbaker]

I haven't even managed to install VMware player yet! I found this tutorial (http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-ins...-linux-mint-11) which is a few years old but I decided to give it a go anyway. It worked to some extent, in that it got Terminal to say something:

dorothea@kubuntu-VirtualBox:~$ cd /home/dorothea/Downloads
dorothea@kubuntu-VirtualBox:~/Downloads$ kdesudo bash ./VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.i386.bundle
Extracting VMware Installer...done.

Nothing happened after that though. There are no install instructions in the documentation for newbies like me (apparently it's so obvious everyone is supposed to just automatically know how to do it, lol.)

edit: when I ran this again I got

Another installation is already in progress. Complete the currently
running installation before running this one.

[SteveRiley]

I haven't even managed to install VMware player yet!

See this: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?62913

Also, what kernel version is installed in your guest OS?

[dbaker]

here is some info; not sure which part, if any, is the kernel version...

Linux kubuntu-VirtualBox 3.8.0-29-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 13 23:12:18 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

Thanks for that link, I now have VMware installed. open-vm-tools did it. I couldn't make much sense of the rest of that thread but I'm probably going to have to have another go at trying to understand it, because you said that open-vm-tools and open-vm-dkms (which I already had) are only useful on virtual machines. So when I get my new laptop...hmm.