- Three OS for the
Microsoft-kings under the Redmond sky (Microsoft-DOS, Windows NT,
Vista),
- Seven for the Unix-Lords
in their halls of stone (A/UX, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD,
Minix, SunOS, UnixWare),
- Nine (or 99) Mortal Linux Brands doomed to die (Mandriva, SuSE,
Debian, Lindows, Red Hat, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware),
- One for Lord Jobs in his dark shirt and jeans
- In the Land of Cupertino where the Shadows lie
- One OS to rule them all,
- One OS to find them,
- One OS to bring them all
- and using a VM bind them
- In the Land of Cupertino where the Shadows lie.
I just installed VMware Fusion on my Mac Pro, and the ability to install and
run a multitude of other OSes is amazing. It feels like I can do
anything and still pop back to my Mac with a mouse click. It is as easy
as Frodo putting on the One Ring. The thing about Sauron's ring was
that it was pure evil, but that didn't stop anyone who touched it from
wanting to own it. It had a corruptive influence on the wearer, a
combination of great power with feelings of dominance.
I've used emulation software for years, and it has never felt good
enough. Sure, years ago you could install it on a fast machine with
lots or RAM and hard drive space. Even given all these advantages, it
ran at half speed at best.
That is not the problem any more. Linux, Vista, SunOS, etc. can now
run in a separate window at what feels like full speed. Emulation was
slow, and you only used it when you had to. Now you can run whatever is
convenient - or just try a different OS for fun.
By convenient, I mean whatever you happen to own or want to buy. A
couple of months ago I tried Crossover to test
several PC compatible applications I had sitting around the house.
Crossover felt slow and failed to run any of the applications I tried.
My test was a little unfair - none of the programs were on their known
to work list except Microsoft Office. Still I was hopeful that one
would be compatible enough. I repeated the test of these same
applications with Vista and Boot Camp, and I got different results.
Let's go back in time a little bit so I can explain all that has
happened. After the lack of success with Crossover, I broke down and
bought Vista Ultimate off
eBay. (Ultimate is normally a total rip-off in price, but I got a
good deal on the OEM version.) Using Boot Camp, Vista installs like it
normally would on a regular PC computer. Everything appears to be 100%
compatible, and it worked fine. I was able to install every test
program from before. Everything worked except ACAD 2004 - some missing
file error wouldn't let it run. I switched to ACAD 2000, and that
worked fine. Even my lame backup copy of Microsoft Office 97 installed
and ran. I do get an error message when I run Microsoft Office, but in
typical PC fashion, I just ignore it and everything is okay.
If Boot Camp was this good, I had to try out VMware Fusion. This is
the icing on the cake, in my opinion. You run the whole Windows
environment just like another application. It uses the existing Vista
installation from Boot Camp, so I didn't have to keep two copies on my
computer. Now I launch Vista when I want to try something, and I quit
it when I'm done. Everything I installed using Boot Camp still
works.
There is one quirk that I can't explain. I use multiple desktop
users on my computer. When run from the main desktop, Vista can use my
Internet connection. If I switch users, I can still run Vista, but I
have no Internet access. This generally isn't a big deal - since I'm
already running Mac OS X, I just use it for Internet.
I will say that I picked Vista because PC virus problems concern me.
Using a Mac for years has left me unready to deal with virus problems.
When I did my install, I bought a separate hard drive to keep all the
Vista/PC stuff away from my more important Mac stuff. This may have
been overkill, but for me better safe than sorry. The first application
I installed on Vista was a virus checker.
Using VMware Fusion, I have also installed Ubuntu. It is nice. It
actually feels very snappy on the Mac Pro. Unfortunately, I have no
great need for Linux and no Linux applications. Except for the
installing and running a few of the packaged applications (like games),
I've mostly ignored Ubuntu.
The person at my house who uses Fusion for Vista the most is my son.
Why him? Because of games. He had me download and install a game
building program that is only available for Windows. Of all the
applications that are missing on the Mac, games are the hardest to find
equivalent replacements for. My son is only 11, so we haven't run any
of the latest games that are rated M (mature) to really test out the
virtual machine performance. I know that in a pinch we could always
switch to Boot Camp and get the performance we need. So far he has no
complaints and is just glad to be able to game like he wants.
While I think Vista and Linux are nice, now they are just another
application that can run on a Mac. I love the power of the One OS. If
you try it, I'm sure you'll agree that Mac OS X plus Fusion (or
Parallels)
is a killer combination with amazing possibilities. 
