Neverside

Originally posted by Noel:

Why the hell is this thread stickied?

Who knows...

Last edited by Rider, October 15th, 2007 01:47 PM (Edited 1 times)

I just got a 17" Macbook Pro! Woot woot.

It has the hi-res/anti-glare screen as well.

Originally posted by Art_Vandelay:

lol, I found something: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834999416

Does exactly what I want.

Just watch out for those fan blades down there... heh heh
Congrats on the Mac... let me know if you need any pointers or ways of doing things you were used to in windows haha... I went through the same thing a while back.

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Is it possible to run linux on a macbook pro? Like openSuse or Ubuntu? Im pretty sure it is, I just cant find any good tutorials or anything that explain how to do it.

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Lies

After a brief look, it seems you "can" install Linux possibly using Apple's BootCamp and some tweaks - though it looks a bit iffy, particularly in regard to driver support. When you install Windows through BootCamp, you have to also burn a CD that Apple provides with custom drivers to make the system work completely in Windows... there's no current disk from Apple (to my knowledge) that does the same for Linux. Search google for "boot camp" in combination with your favorite Linux distro name to see if there's any tips on how to do it. It's also feasible that Apple will add more supported OSes in the future to Boot Camp - they've just started with Windows of course, since that's the market they're trying hardest to reach.

That aside, you definitely CAN run Linux as a virtual machine. For that you'll need either Parallels or VMware Fusion (or there could be some other options that I'm not aware of). Personally I've chosen to go with VMware, since in my comparison it has been more stable (Parallels had the rarely-seen ability of actually crashing OS X, though that is likely fixed by now), and VMware consumes less resources (again, the balance may have tipped since then), and because VMware has been doing virtualization since the dinosaur age, with experience on almost every platform and know what they're doing, whereas Parallels is a new company. Both of them bypass the drivers issue with Linux since they provide their own virtualized hardware support.

On my MBP I'm currently running Windows XP Pro (for testing in IE), CentOS 4.4 (same as Neverside runs on), and CentOS 5 (testing for upgrading the NS server). You can install just about any distro you can imagine. It's not quite as smooth as a native OS experience, but it comes with some great conveniences (e.g. drag and drop between OSes, instant "snapshots" of the OS state that you can revert to if you mess it up, etc).

Good luck

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Thanks AC

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Lies

I guess another query i can add is how reliable is apple hardware known to be? Should I get the 300$+ apple care warranty or should I go without?

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Lies

I think it has a pretty good reputation... in my experience at least, it has been flawless. A significant contrast from the garbage Dell's they use at my work, which break constantly.

Should you get the warranty? I generally advise yes on any laptop, PC or Mac. Some reasons: small enclosed area increases heat on components, constant moving jars components and makes this or that inside more liable to slip lose, smaller/custom parts in laptops aren't necessarily as reliable as their larger desktop siblings (particularly laptop size hard drives). All the above and also, if it breaks, it's a lot harder to do a DIY fixing job versus a desktop - a few minor things you can take care of, but many will have you heading for the repair shop, where you'll then have to pay both parts and labor (one repair will likely cost more than the warranty would have).

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com