Day: January 8, 2008

Learning Mac OS X

At my job I am now working to some extent with Mac OS X. My overall impression: Looks good but like Windows it is built on the assumption that “the user should not know how things work”. Some things are done quite elegantly but others are just too dumbed down for my taste.

On the command line the first thing that I noticed was that all the standard folder names start with a capital letter and are more verbose than on Unix. The default shell is bash which is nice for me since I am used to it and know it quite well from Linux.

The version of the Vim editor that comes with OS X is outdated and not very convenient to use. I installed a Vim 7.x build from macvim.org.

I learned about DMG images and that it’s not easy or sometimes even impossible to mount them on Linux. Otherwise mounting was pretty straightforward, for example the SMB share that I use to export my Linux home directory. I could have tried to do the same with NFS but SMB was just easier and I didn’t want to go into the details of uid and guid mapping. Plus, the SMB share is also accessible from the Windows that runs inside a Virtualbox.

One small thing that I don’t like on the Mac is the lack of a “Maximize window” function that maximizes the current window as much as possible. I guess I am not the only one.

Windows in a box

Until quite recently I did not use any operating system virtualization software. On my main PC I ran only Kubuntu and on my laptop I had a dual boot setup with the Windows XP installation that came pre-installed and Kubuntu.

VMware was not very appealing to me since it is proprietary software, not Open Source. A few weeks ago I gave VirtualBox a try. It is available as an Open Source Edition (OSE). There are packages included in the Ubuntu distribution so it was quite easy to install.

I must say that I am very impressed. The UI is intuitive, well documented and straightforward to use. I installed Windows XP Professional as a guest system and it worked without problems.

I had to realize, though, that “Shared Folders” are only supported in the Commercial Edition. That is not a problem since Folder Sharing can be done with Samba.

“Seamless mode” makes the experience even better: The windows from the Win XP desktop and the Kubuntu desktop appear as parts of one united desktop, with the taskbar and desktop background changing according to what window is currently active.

VirtualBox is developed by the German company InnoTek. Keep up the good work, guys!