OSCAR using VMWare, old Mac, Linux

[midwestguy]

My Mac Pro (early 2008) is stuck at OS X 10.11.8 (El Capitan).
Thanks to many suggestions, I checked Craigslist and found
old Windows machines in the $100-$200 range and Mac laptops
around $500-$600. Either could be used with some work.

My son the software guy, suggested a cheaper solution: VMWare.
The VMWare Fusion product allows guest OSes, including Linux
flavors. I've done some Terminal stuff on the Mac, and some
Unix a while back. Some command line isn't foreign territory.

I looked around on the VMWare site, and found what seems to
be a Fusion release that supports OS X 10.9.x and above. So
it's possible. My Mac has specs acceptable to Fusion (memory,
disk space, processor). An SD card via USB runs $10 - $12.

Does this sound like it'll support OSCAR? Which Linux flavor
works best? (Fusion has a good selection.) What should I
watch out for?

Thanks!

Harv

[Jeff8356]

Which version of VMware Fusion did you find that will work on your 2008 Mac?  Was it 8?

EDIT: Looking at the version 8 specs it can run up to Ubuntu 15.04 which is older and the current versions of OSCAR are for Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04
Fusion 10 specs call for 2011 and newer Mac hardware.

So you are still in a similar situation.

[untoutseul05]

Ubuntu 15.04 --> means April 2015. This version was supported 9 months.
Ubuntu 14.04 --> It is (was) a LTS (Long Term Support). This version had been supported for 5 years. So until April,30 2019

I agree with Jeff8356 : you are supposed to use only a supported version (so 18.04 ou 20.04 for Ubuntu).

[becker44a]

. . .
My son the software guy, suggested a cheaper solution: VMWare.
The VMWare Fusion product allows guest OSes, including Linux
flavors. I've done some Terminal stuff on the Mac, and some
Unix a while back. Some command line isn't foreign territory.

I looked around on the VMWare site, and found what seems to
be a Fusion release that supports OS X 10.9.x and above. So
it's possible. My Mac has specs acceptable to Fusion (memory,
disk space, processor). An SD card via USB runs $10 - $12.
. . .
Harv

Hi Harv,
First, the guest OSs that VMware lists are only those available at the time the VMware product was released.  That doesn't mean that it won't run more recent Guest OSs - you can only find out by experiment.  I used to run VMware ESXi with a wide variety of guests, and I would not expect trouble running current linux guests under ESXi.  Fusion may be similar.

Next:  The most important attribute of any virtualization affecting the usability of its guest OSs is the performance of its virtual disks.  When I migrated from Windows to Linux, I tested several virtualizations, starting with VMware Player, since I was so familiar with VMware.  The virtual disk performance was atrocious, turning less than 5 MB/sec.  I tried VirtauBox next, and the virtual disk performance shot up to around 50 MB/sec.  I built and loaded a Window 7 VM, and its performance is similar to the Windows 7 that was on the bare metal of this same laptop before migration.  I believe this is because VirtualBox uses a "Paravirtualization" driver to pass disk requests thru to the host os.

I don't know anything about virtualization on your Mac, but be prepared to test several to find one that works well in your environment.
Hope this helps.

[untoutseul05]

I tried VirtauBox next,

There was a misspelling : it's Virtual Box.

[sawinglogz]

My Mac Pro (early 2008) is stuck at OS X 10.11.8 (El Capitan).
...
I looked around on the VMWare site, and found what seems to
be a Fusion release that supports OS X 10.9.x and above. So
it's possible.

It looks like Fusion 10 will run on El Cap. But can you still buy that version?

These are the guest OSs supported by Fusion 10. Note that you can run OS X 10.12 and 10.13 in a VM, even when your host is running 10.11! I'm not sure how exactly that wizardry works, but they claim it does.

You can also run Ubuntu 18.04, which is an LTS release and supported through April 2023.

Edit: Don't miss the blue links above, which aren't underlined until you mouse over them.

[happydreams]

As an alternative, I just got a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB to run OSCAR 1.2.0.  An RPi4 is relatively cheap.  I have mine hooked up to a 1080p monitor, and a wireless keyboard and mouse.  I'm using the RPi4 because my laptop of 7 years died abruptly 2 days ago.  It's no Mac, but the RPi4-4GB does run OSCAR amazingly well.  The hardest part for me was finding a USB SD card reader that was hidden somewhere in the house.  Plugged in the SD card reader and OSCAR grabbed the data and ran with it!

Posted from an RPi4-4GB

[midwestguy]

Thanks, happydreams. That’s fine as a Plan B, but I’d need a display and keyboard.
I’ve got SleeyHead running without any extra effort, and am waiting for an SD card
reader to arrive in the mail. If the graphs SH produces can improve my sleep, I’ll be
a happy camper.

Harv

[happydreams]

You could try a Raspberry Pi 400, the new one with an integrated keyboard.  That way you would only need to hook it up to a TV.  I'm assuming you have a TV with an HDMI port on it.  Then you don't have to buy a monitor.  I haven't tried one, but it seems like an inexpensive way to get up and running.

[midwestguy]

Thanks, happydreams. Will keep it in mind if Sleepyhead doesn’t work out.

Harv