Running SL on a Mac

[friscolives]

I'm a long time Windows user, but wondering if SL would run well on a Mac computer. Any Mac users out there care to comment?

[Madelaine McMasters]

I've been running SL on my various Macs for nearly six years. I've had very few problems (beyond those that vex us all), though I suspect my frame rates are lower than they'd be if I ran SL under windows on my Macs (which you can do via BootCamp if you have a copy of Windows). LL support for the Mac lags that for Windows.

If you are considering purchase of a Mac with the intent of running SL, make sure you get one with a discrete graphics processor, not just the Intel integrated GPU. The only portable computer Apple offers with discrete graphics is the 15" MacBook Pro, which is a beautiful and expensive machine. The entry level 21" iMac has Intel graphics, but all other models have nVIDIA GPUs. And finally, the upcoming Mac Pro has a pair of whizzy ATI GPUs, but probably won't be able to harness both of them for SL. The Mac Mini also uses Intel integrated graphics.

My current main Mac is a 27" iMac with nVIDIA GTX 680MX GPU. I get 20-30 FPS on my home sim with nearly everything turned on (50-70 if I turn off advanced lighting). I've never seen the 100+ FPS rates that Windows users using the same GPU have claimed.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I run SL on a late-year 2011 iMac (after they redid the internal specs).

Works great. Every few patches something slows down for a bit and right now it seems like the viewer is in a slow down phase. But usually its great.

If you have multiple monitors, and use the OSX feature to have multiple screens per monitor... sometimes SL can lose track of itself. When this happens I lose the ability to turn or move with the keyboard (mouse still works) until I switch to another screen and back.

 

I have bootcamp installed as well - and get about the same results in either OS (except for that movement freeze thing).

My flickr, linked off my profile and my blog - should show that I can get fairly nice graphics out of it.

I tend to keep shadows off when moving around, but 'Advanced Lighting Mode' on. Turning on shadows only for screenshots.

 

I probably won't stay Mac for the long term though. I looked at the new MacBook Pro that is about come out for $2000 with its high end graphics card (GTX 750 I think). Then I went to a gaming laptop website and found the model with the same card... for just over $700...

I make decent money right now, but not so decent that $2000 = $700 for me.

So chances are my next computer will be a PC.

 

[Orca Flotta]

I'm a long time Windows user, but wondering if SL would run well on a Mac computer.

 

/me shakes her little fists at the sky in anger and frustration, crying out: "Why o why, God? Whyyyyy???"

So you wanna get rid of the cholera and trade it in for pestilence? If you want a  modern, uncomplicated, maintainence free, secure, save and rock solid stable system, why don't you get a PC (more hardware choice and less expensive than Apple) and install a modern Linux on it? There are so many desktops to chose from these days, from their own classic Linux desktops to nearly identical clones of Windows and MacOS. If you want you may install a new environment every day until you find the one that's right for you. Also you have total freedom to tweak and mod the desktops to your fancy. And the best thing about it: it's all completely free and community driven. So you can find help around the clock in every language you like. Most distros come with an extensive software pack: graphics, browser, office, torrent, media ... you name it, Linux has it. All the rest you can download with single mouseclicks from the quite exhaustive repositories. Also you'll be notified as soon as there are newer versions available and install them with one mouseclick as well. Also there is  no need to clean the foxing registry, install antivirus software or a firewall.

Starting point: Linux Mint, Manjaro, Makulu, Suse, Linux Light, ZorinOS. These are all good and newbie friendly.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Not everyone is a software engineer who desires to no longer buy another program every again.

The selection on Mac is not as wide as on PC, especially if gaming - but it exists.

And more important, for non-techies, a Mac is very hard to mess up or misconfigure. You can have the technical skills of a hamster - and use a Mac just fine.

With most of humanity - just explaining what 'download from a repository' means will leave them as confused as trying to explain 3D subsurface light rendering calculations to a pigeon...

Most people just want to know where to plug it in, and which button is for turning it on.

 

[Orca Flotta]

Not everyone is a software engineer who desires to no longer buy another program every again.

Hey, me's no software engineer neither but just a totally ungeeky housewife. In fact I came to Linux like a virgin to a baby. Messed up my old lappy and after reinstalling windows I couldn't get the wireless thingie to work. So my cleverly stupid hubby threw a selfburned DVD on my desk: "Forget that fuxxing Windows and try this instead!". On the CD was scribbled only one word: Ubuntu.

Of course I stared at him with my famous stupendous blank expression so he was so friendly to tell me "That's a Linux OS and seems to be all the rage lately."  Having heard about how complex and difficult Linux is I was first a bit afraid ... but then I noticed how easy it was to install. All the drivers were automatically detected and already included. Unlike Windows wheer you need  to download all the stuff extra. And all the software I need on that old laptop came preinstalled. I was over the moon and am using Linux as my main OS on that lappy since 4 or 5 years. When I got my good SL desktop I bought of course a copy of Win 7 with it. Mostly for one reason only: I was afraid I couldn't get SL running on a Linux system. But then I noticed how awkwardly complicated Win is and how much TLC it needs every day just to perform halfway decently. So, like a year ago I swapped my big rig to Linux as welll. I don't know sheet about Linux but there is no need for that. Everything is running straight out of the box and I don't need to do any maintenance, no antivirus, no registry cleaning, no voodoo speed-up program. Once Linux is installed it will just run and run and run. I don't even have a firewall. Hubby on the other hand was always a coward and only lately installed Linux on his machine as well ... after I was nagging him into submission. :smileyvery-happy: He's still on an old Ubuntu version though, while I was distro hopping for a while until I found my personal favourite Linux.

About the purchase of software I got to say Open Source doesn't necessarily mean Free like in free beer. You can pay for your software if you want, you can also pay for support or administration. But I love the philosophy of open source software, even if I personally make no use of it (as I'm not a software engineer), it's just so politically corrrect. And it's a good feeling to know that I could if I wanted.

And download from repository sounds more geeky than it actually is: a repo is a catalog that lists all available additional software for your system. Last I looked it was like 67,000 programs. So if I want a nifty new media player that can do more than the one already installed with the basic distro I just click the repo from the start menu (yes, my Linux looks and feels a lot like Win 7), type in "media...." and swoosh I get a list of dozens of multimedia players. And from there I download and install my new software with a single mouseclick. It's all so easy. If I don't like that program, I can deinstall it in the same easy way. And here is the cherry on top of the already so yummy cream: from time to time I see from a little icon in my task bar that their are updates for my system, not with a forced shutdown lie Microsoft does it but the symbol will sit there for days until I find the time to do the upgrade. Again it's just one  click and the system updates itself ... including all additional software I installed later, if updates are available. Computing can be so easy and fun.

About messing up: literally impossible to make your Linux crash or misconfigure anything. Experts (those people who actually know what they are doing) often recommend Linux especially for the elderly, for kids and housewifes.

But I can understand that people are afraid of Linux. It still carries that stigma of a selfmade special OS for geeks, IT students, software engineers and server admins. Yes, Linux powers the internet and many many server farms all over the world, it can be very complicated and special. But so are the systems by Oracle and MIcrosoft. Being fairly familiar with Windows doesn't make you a network admin.

And there is another downside to Linux: the absolute freedom can give the user too much of a choice, strange as it sounds. There are just too many (often very similar) Linux distros available for download. But as long as you stick with the handful big distros (*buntu, Mint, Manjaro, openSUSE, Fedora, CrunchBang, Debian, Puppy,  PCLinuxOS ...) you'll always get an easy to use professional OS.

Of course, if you are sooo ungeeky you can't use any other office suite than MS office and no other image program than PhotoShop you are probably wrong in the world of Open Source software. A little learning curve is  always involved. For me it took like 10 miutes after installation to get myself acquainted with my new system (I was using Open Source software exclusively even under Win), and roundabout half an hour to finally get SL running. But here is another good thing about Linux: help is never far away! Alone in SL we have countless Linux user groups who can tell you exactly how to get your personal viewer up and running.

 

PS: Mac users are often left outside of any computer discussion because they are limiting themselves to a dummy status. They love to pay more for less, they don't want choice, they don't want freedom. But they want the iLifestyle. :smileyvery-happy: Some ppl just can't be helped. Most of them don't even know that their beloved MacOS is indeed nothing but a commercialized and heavily restricted and closed up version of open BSD, a close relative to Linux. Guess what that X in MacOS X stands for? :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I run both windows and Linux, on two different machines.

First of all, I can't run my most important programs on Linux, WINE doesn't work well with it. WINE isn't a Linux default either, so not a plug and play situation, even if it would run half decent.

While I can choose for myself when I do it, I spend more time downloading and updating Linux than I do cleaning Windows. I wouldn't feel comfortable using a Linux machine for business purposes anyway. Windows viruses won't affect a Linux machine, but that doesn't mean you can't pass them on I think.

Finding something as simple as hardware monitoring tools for Linux I have found near impossible, forcing me to script some conkey setup (my scripting skills are pretty much limited to copy pasting). It works, but it took me a full day.

The problems you had with your wireless, I had myself, but the other way around. The adapter I had used for years on XP, didn't work at all on Linux. Believe me I've tried to make it work and while I'm no expert, I know my way around a computer.

I have never had any issues with drivers for Windows. Everything I have plugged into the computer worked out of the box.

I prefer Linux over Windows on my old PC, simply because it does the job (watching a video here and there for the better part) just fine and XP won't when support stops (pretty soon). When I have issues with my Windows machine, a simple google usually allows me to fix it quickly. If I search for any Linux issues, all I can find is complicated command line magic. At the moment both machines are running fine, so that itself is proof everything can be fixed somehow, I prefer Windows nonetheless.

I think the main reason why a lot of big companies use Linux, is because it is open source and not because it works so well compared to Windows.