Posiix Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 Hi all, That for clarifying my last question...I'm now interested in installing Linux on my MacBook pro.. 1. I'm wondering if this can be done without formatting my hd? 2. As well if many of you have macbooks, do you install Linux on them in place of OSX, or with it, or not at all? I'm trying to establish a base for learning with my laptop, any advice in this? Thanks guys. Pos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nullArray Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 Hi all, That for clarifying my last question...I'm now interested in installing Linux on my MacBook pro.. 1. I'm wondering if this can be done without formatting my hd? 2. As well if many of you have macbooks, do you install Linux on them in place of OSX, or with it, or not at all? I'm trying to establish a base for learning with my laptop, any advice in this? Thanks guys. Pos. 1. Yes..., using the bootcamp assistant, the Mac will take care of everything. 2. I have installed several different flavors of Linux, but I never stick with it, because it doesn't provide me with anything that OS X can't do, and OS X is more stable doing all of those things. There are also a few quirks that can be difficult to set up, like trackpads, iSight, and AirPort. I would never straight-up remove OS X though, that's the reason I bought the computer. Which Linux distro do you want? I can point you in the right direction for installation instructions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nullArray Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 double post, sorry, not sure how it happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posiix Posted February 19, 2009 Author Share Posted February 19, 2009 1. Yes..., using the bootcamp assistant, the Mac will take care of everything. 2. I have installed several different flavors of Linux, but I never stick with it, because it doesn't provide me with anything that OS X can't do, and OS X is more stable doing all of those things. There are also a few quirks that can be difficult to set up, like trackpads, iSight, and AirPort. I would never straight-up remove OS X though, that's the reason I bought the computer. Which Linux distro do you want? I can point you in the right direction for installation instructions. Thanks for the reply. My intension for the time being is to understand the nature of networks and Internet security, hence, hacking in general. I'm interested in using apps like nmap and otherwise, which in my meager experience with Linux I've been able to get running.. I've puchased, on the advice of another, the books: Hacking for Dummies and Gray Hat Hacking, and ice heared the latter has a number of scripts and apps mentioned in It that are made for Linux. Will these work just as well on Terminal, or would you install Linux? I'd also like to experiment with C and C++ scripting as it applies to a hack ( don't know how that is yet ), again, is OSX suitable in that respect? If not, I have fedora installed on another old laptop.. Would that be your best choice of Linux for what I'm looking to learn? Or would somthing like Slackware be a better choice? Thanks! Really appreciate your taking the time to help me out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimitar Posted February 21, 2009 Share Posted February 21, 2009 Thanks for the reply. My intension for the time being is to understand the nature of networks and Internet security, hence, hacking in general. I'm interested in using apps like nmap and otherwise, which in my meager experience with Linux I've been able to get running.. I've puchased, on the advice of another, the books: Hacking for Dummies and Gray Hat Hacking, and ice heared the latter has a number of scripts and apps mentioned in It that are made for Linux. Will these work just as well on Terminal, or would you install Linux? I'd also like to experiment with C and C++ scripting as it applies to a hack ( don't know how that is yet ), again, is OSX suitable in that respect? If not, I have fedora installed on another old laptop.. Would that be your best choice of Linux for what I'm looking to learn? Or would somthing like Slackware be a better choice? Thanks! Really appreciate your taking the time to help me out. Any flavor of Linux will be good enough to do whatever any of the above mentioned books describe. This is not something you have to worry about. But what you should be concerned with is how easy it is to maintain and configure the linux distribution in question. In this respect Fedora is not a bad choice. I personally like the "Debian like" distos. A good choice here would be Ubuntu. Also, C and C++ are not scripting languages, they are programming languages. I would recommend the book "Beginning C++" by Ivor Horton if you are serious abut learning it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cthobs Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 One suggestion might be a virtualization environment for your Mac, like Parallels. You could run two Linux VMs simultaneously in their own vlan. This would let you play with network tools. This would also be an easy way of installing distros without having to worry about hw compatibility issues. And when you're done with a distro and want to play with another one, you just delete it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machstorm Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 You might know this already but Mac Unix based. Although it's not Linux it's not all that different at the command line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cthobs Posted February 28, 2009 Share Posted February 28, 2009 You might know this already but Mac Unix based. Although it's not Linux it's not all that different at the command line. If someone is looking to learn GNU/Linux, Mac OS X is not the place to do it. It may be a derivative of BSD, but it's not a Linux type friendly environment. And it's not the place to be installing GNU/Linux apps. Being dependent on something like DarwinPorts to get all those apps is not reliable. Not to mention the mess the interface creates. And running a VM gives you the opportunity to do things without worrying about killing your machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 28, 2009 Share Posted February 28, 2009 i dont get it, why would you pay 2 times the money for a macbook pro just to format it and put linux on it? you could easily get a better spec'd machine for probably half the price in a pc and run linux on it all day long. now i know thats not the trendy cool iThing to do but it just seems like it would make more sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machstorm Posted February 28, 2009 Share Posted February 28, 2009 I got my ThinkPad T61 from IBM with Linux installed for $650 (Originally $1300) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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