Re: [MacPerl] linux

[riechert@pobox.com (Andreas Marcel Riechert)]

At 16:57 99.11.20 -0800, Nicholas G. Thornton wrote:
>I've been looking through my archive of emails from the list and came accross
>somethig which's caught my attention again, Linux on a Mac box. I was wondering
>if someone could give me a general idea of which acts as a real os, which as an
>application running under MacOS, problems with each; or where I could find the
>answers?
>
>
>le meas,
>
>--Nick

MachTen and MkLinux/ LinuxPPC was discussed by others in this thread. I use(ed)
MkLinux and LinuxPPC.
Anyway I am a Mac-guy with just one computer at home, who cannot live without
some UNIX/Linux nearby. The Mac Linuxes are just to far away because I have to
reboot! So the only choice seems to be MachTen to run MacOS and Unix at the same
time. 
But, there is an other choice:
At the moment I run Net-BSD and Vine-Linux (RedHat based dist.) on VirtualPC. Its
a cheap way and the installation of Vine-Linux including Internet access went very
smooth. Unbelievable smooth! (Enabling DHCP in the Linux installation was the only
setup I needed to be Internet-ready (VirtualPC 3.0 can act as the "DHCP server" if
you choose to have the same IP Number for MacOS and VPC).

Some thoughts:
*For a Linux beginner, Virtual PC seems to be a good starting point. It is easy to back
up the whole Linux-system (Just make a copy of the HD-image) and you can always
escape to MacOS. (after a backup of the Linux-HD image, doing some really dirty and
"dangerous" stuff makes really fun;-)

* Linux on VirtualPC is slow. I run a G3/233Mhz and starting X-Windows applications
seems to take for ever. (An already started emacs isn t that bad). 
Actually I usally run in the console-mode, where it runs fast enough for me. I cannot
remember how long it took, but compiling Perl on VPC/Net-BSD didn't seem to take
too long.

*Linux/BSD becomes just an application without protected memory etc. But for trying
out things, runing diff and some other utilities I am used to, it is a fine system. (Never
felt like learning all the MPW-tools;-)

Its not the "real thing" but it makes fun and is convienient.


Andreas Marcel

PS: I usually read the Perl documentation on VirtualPC Linux/ Net-BSD. This alone
was enough reason for me to install it.


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