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Linux on Mac Pro
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I'm also trying to decide between flavors for linux installations...
Anyone have any experiences to share? It seems Ubuntu is popular here, but i'm interested in hearing about commercial grade installations (like SuSE, Red Hat, Fedora), presumably like the OP...
Anyone have any experiences to share? It seems Ubuntu is popular here, but i'm interested in hearing about commercial grade installations (like SuSE, Red Hat, Fedora), presumably like the OP...
I use and like Fedora, mainly because at work we use Red Hat servers and the two are pretty close, so I know my code will most likely run without any modifications. Overall, there's not a lot of difference in the more up-to-date Linuxes. I prefer Fedora's package management (yum) over eg. apt-get, but that's really because I'm used to yum.
The best thing to do is try out some distros. A lot of them have live CDs, or you can do a full install in a VM using either VMWare Fusion's public beta or Parallels trial, if you don't already own Parallels. I found that Fusion supports a wider range of *nix installs - for instance I couldn't get Ubuntu 7 or Solaris 10 installed in Parallels, but Fusion worked fine (other people haven't had any problems with Solaris on Parallels)
The best thing to do is try out some distros. A lot of them have live CDs, or you can do a full install in a VM using either VMWare Fusion's public beta or Parallels trial, if you don't already own Parallels. I found that Fusion supports a wider range of *nix installs - for instance I couldn't get Ubuntu 7 or Solaris 10 installed in Parallels, but Fusion worked fine (other people haven't had any problems with Solaris on Parallels)
I can not vouch for SUSE but I installed Fedora 6 at our Mac Pro
Quad Core without headaches.
It has been ruinng 24/7 since then.
Good luck !
Quad Core without headaches.
It has been ruinng 24/7 since then.
Good luck !
Somebody on this page:
http://www.macresearch.org/linux_on_macbook_pro_for_matlab
says:
It doesn't seem that many people in this forum run linux...
http://www.macresearch.org/linux_on_macbook_pro_for_matlab
says:
It doesn't seem that many people in this forum run linux...
My buddy in work runs Red Hat on his Macbook, I wouldn't expect the Mac Pro to be much harder. He had it running by itself and now has it running under parallels.
Linux via VMWare is waaay better than via Parallels, IMHO, particularly the automatic resolution change (whether in a window or full screen) and the graphics/mouse support. Oh yeah, and it's free for now. 
Could you please elaborate on your installation experience? Did it go smoothly like on a normal pc or where there any hiccups? Also, you say quad-core, do you mean quad-core cpu or as in total number of processing cores in the machine? Thanks!
I need Debian on here, but I couldn't get it too install.
Oh well, that's what I have my PC for.
Oh well, that's what I have my PC for.
actually you can use bootcamp too for installing linux over macpro.
after you installed bootcamp, press ALT/OPTION at the time before boot (before you heard apple sound) and then you'll see the option which os you want to boot (of course you have online 1 os (macos-x itself) insert your linux installation cd/dvd, and you'll see option to boot your linux cd/dvd and select that linux cd/dvd installation, and installing like normally on pc
after you installed bootcamp, press ALT/OPTION at the time before boot (before you heard apple sound) and then you'll see the option which os you want to boot (of course you have online 1 os (macos-x itself) insert your linux installation cd/dvd, and you'll see option to boot your linux cd/dvd and select that linux cd/dvd installation, and installing like normally on pc
actually you can use bootcamp too for installing linux over macpro.
after you installed bootcamp, press ALT/OPTION at the time before boot (before you heard apple sound) and then you'll see the option which os you want to boot (of course you have online 1 os (macos-x itself) insert your linux installation cd/dvd, and you'll see option to boot your linux cd/dvd and select that linux cd/dvd installation, and installing like normally on pc
Tried it. The installer doesn't see my optical drives.
I will try the "testing" installer later tonight, but I doubt it will work.
I for the first time since I bought my Mac Pro was able to boot a live distribution of Ubunto Feisty 7.04 and was quite happy to see everything appeared to be supported.
I have not done an install yet but from what I could see in system information all devices were recognized and working.
I have not done an install yet but from what I could see in system information all devices were recognized and working.
Anybody got SuSe or Red Hat up and running on an Octo core yet? If so, are you able to get full multi-processing capability out of it? Does the OS properly see all 8 cores? My guess is that a Linux distro will handle the additional processing cores more gracefully than Tiger (this may change with Leopard), since Linux has been used a lot more for clustering/multiprocessor type stuff already.