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Best *nix Distro For 5,1 MBP

bobbytomorow

bobbytomorow

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 10, 2007
432
23
Left Coast
I heard that some distro's had poor heat management but that was a couple of months ago now. Can someone recommend a good distro for late 2008 MBP. I like openSolaris but can't find info on how it runs on unibodies although I don't mind running any other distro, I am familiar with quite a few but on Windows based PC's, never ran one on Mac hardware...and yes I plan on dual booting with Snow Leopard 10.6.2.
 
Bill Gates said:
Gentoo. If you asked me what the best distro was for your typewriter, I'd still say Gentoo.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the feedback but have you ran it on a gen 5 MBP? Reason I ask is I know some distros have heat issues with gen 5 MBP's, like I stated above.

I'm looking specifically for feedback from users that have experience running a distro, or a few, on a gen 5 MBP.

Although i will look into Gentoo, thanks
 
bobbytomorow said:
I appreciate the feedback but have you ran it on a gen 5 MBP? Reason I ask is I know some distros have heat issues with gen 5 MBP's, like I stated above.

I'm looking specifically for feedback from users that have experience running a distro, or a few, on a gen 5 MBP.

Although i will look into Gentoo, thanks
Click to expand...
I run it through VMware on my MacBook Pro 5,1. No one particular distro should suffer from any sort of heat issues, and I don't buy that for a minute. If any distro has any problems with the MacBook Pro at all it would more likely than not have to do with the kernel configuration, and customizing a vanilla kernel would be the fix. All linux distributions use a subset of the same packages.
 
I don't use linux on my mac anymore, because I can run every linux app in osx.
I also have KDE installed in osx and you can basically compile and run all linux apps in osx.
Yes, it requires some work, but it's less hassle than having to dual boot
 
ok thanks fellas, I think I have come to the conclusion of checking out VMware or Parallels, I was considering that route before but was worried about performance issues running in virtual, maybe I will toss in more RAM then (I only have 2GB).
 
Don't forget VirtualBox. It's free and open-source, and runs Ubuntu & Fedora Core 11 good on my end.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

More Ram never hurts either. Currently I have 2GB as well, but with DDR3 Ram as cheap as it is, I'm planning on bumping up to 4GB here soon.

I'd suggest utilizing the trials of VMWare Fusion/Parallels, and give VirtualBox a try and see if they fulfill your needs.
 
I'm running fedora and f12 (due out tuesday) appears to be very solid. Ubuntu is also a nice distro, probably one that has a little more support for macintosh hardware, because of its installed user base,i.e., more mac users.

I've tried 9.10 and it appears to be ok, though there's a lot of complaining about it on the ubuntu forums. 9.04 was a very solid version and if I wasn't on fedora, I'd be using that (9.04) still.
 
1ofthedavids said:
Don't forget VirtualBox. It's free and open-source, and runs Ubuntu & Fedora Core 11 good on my end.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

More Ram never hurts either. Currently I have 2GB as well, but with DDR3 Ram as cheap as it is, I'm planning on bumping up to 4GB here soon.

I'd suggest utilizing the trials of VMWare Fusion/Parallels, and give VirtualBox a try and see if they fulfill your needs.
Click to expand...

I'd agree regarding virtualbox.

It's got to the point where I don't even dual-boot any more. I only use virtual machines for the few things that I have to do in Linux. I tried VMware but its support for Linux seems to play a poor second-fiddle to their windows support. So much so that I can't see the point of using their software in preference to Sun's if you're only interested in Linux.

It's probably best we don't mention parallels, as my Mum always told me: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."
 
cal6n said:
I'd agree regarding virtualbox.

It's got to the point where I don't even dual-boot any more. I only use virtual machines for the few things that I have to do in Linux. I tried VMware but its support for Linux seems to play a poor second-fiddle to their windows support. So much so that I can't see the point of using their software in preference to Sun's if you're only interested in Linux.

It's probably best we don't mention parallels, as my Mum always told me: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."
Click to expand...
I don't know what gave you that impression about VMware's linux support. VMware Fusion 3 is working flawlessly with my Funtoo (Gentoo-variant) VM, using the latest version of open-vm-tools. Host-guest integration works perfectly. My VM boots so quickly that I actually don't suspend it, but the only quirk that I had was that the time was out-of-sync when resuming suspended guests.
 
cal6n said:
I tried VMware but its support for Linux seems to play a poor second-fiddle to their windows support. So much so that I can't see the point of using their software in preference to Sun's if you're only interested in Linux.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about vmware server or workstation? Since they give the server edition away, I can see why support may be slower.

I've been trying out vmware workstation 7 on fedora 11 (and now 12) and its a very solid product. The support is very good, at least the forums are very helpful. I've not needed to call vmware on any support issue, since there product works so well.

I've tried virtualbox but I had issues with some usb working, the performance was below vmware and the integration was lacking. I had to keep hitting alt-ctl so the guest OS would lose the keyboard/mouse focus. I bounce between vm sessions, so needing to his the keyboard just to access my host os, is a pain. Then there's sun's commitment to virtualbox. With oracle buying it, I wonder what the long term prognosis on this application is.
 
I run Arch Linux on my 5,5 MacBook Pro. Everything except clamshell mode and auto-brightness-adjust works (though I didn't really try to get it to work, either).
 
Best *nix for MBP? OS X of course!

I concur with the recommendation of VirtualBox. I have work VM's of hardware appliances that will only run under vmware...otherwise, I'd stick with VirtualBox.

What is it that you need to do under Linux/Solaris/etc that you can't accomplish under OS X?
 
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