I was bored at work, so I installed OSX on one of our Dells
The company I work for has recently been 'acquired' by a larger company, and all of the Dell machines we have are leased - our new company doesn't want to renew the lease, so the Dells all have to go back. Awwwww 
So anyway, that's probably gonna happen sometime in April. In the mean time, we've cleared all of our files and apps from the Dells onto our new ThinkPads (truly awful laptops I have to say), and the Dells are just sitting around doing nothing. I thought I'd see how OS X runs on them.
Specs for those who are interested:
Dell Optiplex GX240
Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz
1 GB SDRAM
Rage 128 Pro 32MB VRAM
It's pretty much the same as using my old G3 iBook... Which only runs at 600MHz
Anyway, I also thought it would be a laugh to put VMWare and Parallels on there. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare to run because it refused to recognise the license I got from them, and it threw up a kernel panic at the end of the installation. Parallels is up and running, though it is incredibly slow.
But here we have it! A Dell running OS X, running Windows in virtualization
If I'm feeling particularly sick, I might also install VMWare on the Windows environment and run Ubuntu on it. But I doubt that 1gig of RAM will be able to cope with all of that...
Pictures, for your enjoyment (?)
You'll have to forgive me for the poor quality - the phone I'm using is a motorola L6, which has a dreadful, sub-megapixel camera on it.
So anyway, that's probably gonna happen sometime in April. In the mean time, we've cleared all of our files and apps from the Dells onto our new ThinkPads (truly awful laptops I have to say), and the Dells are just sitting around doing nothing. I thought I'd see how OS X runs on them.
Specs for those who are interested:
Dell Optiplex GX240
Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz
1 GB SDRAM
Rage 128 Pro 32MB VRAM
It's pretty much the same as using my old G3 iBook... Which only runs at 600MHz
Anyway, I also thought it would be a laugh to put VMWare and Parallels on there. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare to run because it refused to recognise the license I got from them, and it threw up a kernel panic at the end of the installation. Parallels is up and running, though it is incredibly slow.
But here we have it! A Dell running OS X, running Windows in virtualization
If I'm feeling particularly sick, I might also install VMWare on the Windows environment and run Ubuntu on it. But I doubt that 1gig of RAM will be able to cope with all of that...
Pictures, for your enjoyment (?)
You'll have to forgive me for the poor quality - the phone I'm using is a motorola L6, which has a dreadful, sub-megapixel camera on it.
Comments
I know you're itching for me to ask, "How?"
And if he tells you, he's banned.
Fair warning.
And if he tells you, he's banned.
Fair warning.
Just to play devils advocate, you COULD take it OUTSIDE AppleInsider if you REALLY wanted to know.
For me, I am perfectly happy running Mac OS on a Mac.
I know you're itching for me to ask, "How?"
I was more thinking that the question would be "why?" rather than "how?"
Very VERY skeptical about that.
The means of getting OS X to run on a third-party x86-based machine have been rather well-documented for years.
There's no reason at all to believe that this is fake.
Very VERY skeptical about that. Looks like you've got an iMac hiding under that table. See the blue reflection?
Hehe. It is real - I'll make a wee video of it booting up on Monday when I'm back at work.
As for how easy or hard - it was, eh, 'messy'. Things went wrong and there was lots of fiddling to be done. Probably took about 8 hours in total, because of several failed attempts. It certainly is no replacement for a real Mac.
At the moment, it's sort of working most of the time. This is the current list of problems:
- applications crash quite often
- sometimes it fails to recognise the hard disk on booting
- sound is very choppy
- anything using OpenGL is dog slow
- Energy Saver settings have no effect to the system
- 1024x768 is the only resolution recognised and I can't choose a refresh rate
But you know what, it was still fun to get it up and running, if only for the sheer ridiculousness of it allHehe. It is real - I'll make a wee video of it booting up on Monday when I'm back at work.
As for how easy or hard - it was, eh, 'messy'. Things went wrong and there was lots of fiddling to be done. Probably took about 8 hours in total, because of several failed attempts. It certainly is no replacement for a real Mac.
At the moment, it's sort of working most of the time. This is the current list of problems:
- applications crash quite often
- sometimes it fails to recognise the hard disk on booting
- sound is very choppy
- anything using OpenGL is dog slow
- Energy Saver settings have no effect to the system
- 1024x768 is the only resolution recognised and I can't choose a refresh rate
But you know what, it was still fun to get it up and running, if only for the sheer ridiculousness of it allOk, that sounds about like what I'd expect, I guess.
Chucker, this is what I was talking about:
http://www.applegeeks.com/sm/index.p...html#msg144677
Dude claimed to have installed from a RETAIL version of Tiger. You'll get a chuckle from reading the thread, I think.
Anyway, looks like I'm being paranoid regarding getting MacOS on a pc cause of this guy (eh, the one in the link, not you, yama). I'd still love to see the video though.
It was quite obvious that he didn't have an imac hiding under the table. The system info panel showed a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 proc, as you know, no imac ever had this cpu.
things can be faked. At any rate, I was probably just being overly skeptical. I concede the point.
Fun when people catch me committing the Knee-jerk.
Dude claimed to have installed from a RETAIL version of Tiger. You'll get a chuckle from reading the thread, I think.
Yeah - he's full of shit.
He goofed in his little made-up story of purchasing Tiger on the way out of the Apple store. There is no Intel version of Tiger sold in the Apple store.
Yeah - he's full of shit.
He goofed in his little made-up story of purchasing Tiger on the way out of the Apple store. There is no Intel version of Tiger sold in the Apple store.
<nod> That was the key point that I latched on to too. If not for that, I could have believed that he was just a social dufus. If you check the last post in the thread, you'll notice the second question that I posed to him, regarding the "Feynman Unification Theory". I exchanged a couple more messages with him after that, and he simply said "I'm not sure, ask your prof." Damning answer since the "Feynman Unification Theory" doesn't exist. I made it up to see if he would call me on bs or not. He pretended that he had heard of it. Total poser. Good for a chuckle in retrospect though.
Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwviMAxy8DE
It's actually kinda boring to watch...
Also, I installed the universal binary version of Quake 1 (from fruitz of dojo) and did a quick "timedemo demo1" at 640x480 in software mode. The result was 19.5fps. As a comparison, my PowerBook G4 which runs at 1.5GHz managed to get 52.7fps with the same settings. Ouch! Like I said, performance on the Dell is pretty bad.
I tried running the GL version but that just refused to launch. Oh well.
Here we go, a video of the damn thing booting up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwviMAxy8DE
It's actually kinda boring to watch...
Also, I installed the universal binary version of Quake 1 (from fruitz of dojo) and did a quick "timedemo demo1" at 640x480 in software mode. The result was 19.5fps. As a comparison, my PowerBook G4 which runs at 1.5GHz managed to get 52.7fps with the same settings. Ouch! Like I said, performance on the Dell is pretty bad.
I tried running the GL version but that just refused to launch. Oh well.
ha ha! That's awesome! Good job man!
The company I work for has recently been 'acquired' by a larger company, and all of the Dell machines we have are leased - our new company doesn't want to renew the lease, so the Dells all have to go back. Awwwww
So anyway, that's probably gonna happen sometime in April. In the mean time, we've cleared all of our files and apps from the Dells onto our new ThinkPads (truly awful laptops I have to say), and the Dells are just sitting around doing nothing. I thought I'd see how OS X runs on them.
Specs for those who are interested:
Dell Optiplex GX240
Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz
1 GB SDRAM
Rage 128 Pro 32MB VRAM
It's pretty much the same as using my old G3 iBook... Which only runs at 600MHz
Anyway, I also thought it would be a laugh to put VMWare and Parallels on there. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare to run because it refused to recognise the license I got from them, and it threw up a kernel panic at the end of the installation. Parallels is up and running, though it is incredibly slow.
But here we have it! A Dell running OS X, running Windows in virtualization
If I'm feeling particularly sick, I might also install VMWare on the Windows environment and run Ubuntu on it. But I doubt that 1gig of RAM will be able to cope with all of that...
Wow, you should help this out then: http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=70812
maybe if you show him the way he'll become a mac user after he falls in love with OSX.
"Until now it hasn't been possible to for most corporate users to switch to the Mac OS because they needed applications that only ran on Windows, notably Microsoft Outlook. But that problem is melting away. Beloussov says Parallels is now talking to a number of big companies about making the switch.
VMware's CEO Diane Greene told me last week that her company's existing x86 desktop product is already being used by some to run Mac OS on computers from Dell (Charts), Hewlett-Packard (Charts) and others, though this is not intentional on VMware's part."
What's all the hue and cry? CNN's reporting it. Imagine the curious readers out there who'll try it themselves now.
I think it would be a disaster for Apple, Inc if this happened. All their innovative hardware would gather dust on the shelves (extreme, but you never know).