Hi Greg. I don't have much experience with Linux in a VM (only using Windows) but I expect that both provide similar features.
On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Gregory J. Ward <[email protected]>wrote: > I was thinking I could install a "virtual appliance" for one of the > available Linux systems under VMWare Fusion: > > http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/5793?k=&sort=created >From this list I would think that either "Ubuntu 10.10" or "Fedora 14 desktop image" would be a good choice. Ubuntu 11.04 is now out but it ships with a new default desktop which may be confusing (although it's closer to a Mac if you like your dock on the left side of the screen). In the end it shouldn't matter because you will have to satisfy a large variety of distributions/desktops/versions which are in use today. > This should permit me to do the development work on my Mac, avoiding the > need for another computer or dual-boot system, but I'm open to alternative > suggestions. I assume you can "export" a directory to the guest OS in a Linux VM as you can on Windows. This allows you to edit your files on the Mac and only go to Linux when you have to compile. I have a similar setup with Mac/Windows but it's mostly because a VM on my laptop is noticeably slow and it's not nice to work in it. Of course you can also use scp,rsync or a source control system to sync between two directories. > If I did get one of these VA's, which one would be most useful to the > community? If you want to provide an easy to install binary packages for your app you will have to install both VMs because they represent different package managers (RPM based vs. DEB based). I think there is a tool to convert an *.rpm to a *.deb package but I'm not sure about that. Bernd can give you all the information you need on *.deb. If you expect your users to be fairly familiar with their system you can also just provide *.tgz archives. Matured Linux users will know what to do with it. > Would I have to distribute Photosphere in source form with a build system > to reach a reasonable number of Linux users? These days I expect that most Linux users rely on their package manager to get software installed. If you want to get included in major distributions like Debian you will have to provide source code, too. However, I don't think it's a problem for anyone to download a *.deb or *.rpm file and double-click to install. > I ask because I still have some hopes of recovering some of my development > and documentation costs for Photosphere, which has been in the works for > nearly a decade. (For those of you who don't know, I have been distributing > the Mac version for free from www.anyhere.com, but since it is also based > on Carbon, I can't go any further with it.) > I am a bit out of touch with Linux libraries these days but I remember that is used to be hell to get the right version for a particular software. Further GTK (which is used by wxWindows on Linux) is about to release a new major version which might mess up the GTK based desktops for a while. I think if you build static binaries you shouldn't be too bothered by all of this. But then I don't really understand all the details. Regards, Thomas
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