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PearPC.... anyone used it to Emulate OSX?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:36 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I'm thinking of installing PearPC to emulate OSX on my Intel based machine. From what I've read it works well but it is pretty processor intensive (i.e. 15 times slower than the real CPU in the machine).

Has anyone used it who can let me know what it's like? If there are better PPC emulators out there please let me know :)

Note: It needs to run on x86 architecture under Linux or boot into it's own environment then load the OSX system from there...

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:11 pm
by pickle
You could download the *cough* cracked *cough* version of OSX that'll run on any hardware, then just install it as another partition. I'm not sure how widely available that version is though.

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:36 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I didn't know about that. Interesting. I don't actually use cracked software anymore... I decided to stop doing that a while ago when I went 100% Linux. Most Linux apps are free but if they come with a cost I simply pay it... I really do believe that cracked software and it's availability on P2P networks severely affects the software market. Interesting all the same.

I'm actually going to purchase a copy of Tiger from apple and try running it on an emulator. I'm doing this because I had a play around with it in the Apple store at the Trafford Centre in the UK today and I loved what I saw. I'd rather emulate it for a while before I shell out £1000 for the hardware though :P

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:51 pm
by redmonkey
I played around with it breifly just to see what it was all about.

It was OK as far as OS emulators go but yes, it is resource hungry and as result very slow. I must admit though, I didn't really test the full functionality of the OS so can't really say if there are areas which simply don't work or are not quite right.

Personally I think emulators are only useful if the hardware required to run the OS natively is obsolete or if it's for very infrequent use.

You can pick up used Macs for extremely low prices these days, OS X Tiger will run on even the most modest of hardware.

For what it's worth, I'm in the process of switching to OS X for my every day desktop and development machines.

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 4:12 pm
by Chris Corbyn
redmonkey wrote:Personally I think emulators are only useful if the hardware required to run the OS natively is obsolete or if it's for very infrequent use.

You can pick up used Macs for extremely low prices these days, OS X Tiger will run on even the most modest of hardware
Well yeah I agree. I need to emulate it because I'm not actually sure I want to switch over to OSX until I get more of a feel for it. Well... I doubt I'd ever *completely* switch but the systems (new) aren't cheap to say the least ;)

I had a look around eBay and I see some refurbed G4's going for ~500 GBP which isn't bad at all. Maybe after xmas :D

I'd pay the full £1000 in the shops if I was 100% that I'd get some use out of it ;)

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 4:56 pm
by pickle
I can pick up a new Mac mini for $500 CND (about £244 according to Google). If all else fails, you can install Linux on the hardware when you're done ;).

Are there any particular issues you're not sure about? I'd be happy to try and convince you :)

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 5:26 pm
by Chris Corbyn
pickle wrote:Are there any particular issues you're not sure about? I'd be happy to try and convince you :)
No not really... I'm just not sure if there's enough of a reason to use OSX as opposed to Gentoo on x86 which I love with a passion :) You're right too... I can install Gentoo (or any *nix) on the PPC hardware which I would no doubt play around with too...

I think basically I love the OS I'm using right now but having a play around with OSX in the store just made me wanna try it for a while. Some of the little powerbooks aren't that pricey I guess but I would probably go for a desktop system in any case.

How many people prefer OSX over Linux? I should probably run a poll for this.

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 5:35 pm
by redmonkey
d11wtq wrote:How many people prefer OSX over Linux?
As a desktop system, OS X would be my choice, when it comes to servers, *nix. Although I do have an OS X server.

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:04 pm
by d_d
I prefer os x over linux for desktop use really just because I prefer the GUI. It's pretty much got a *nix underbelly so near enough everything I did with linux can be done on os x.
GUI software can be a bit of a problem because cross platform programs tend to stick out like a sore thumb compared to native apps. X apps in particular don't integrate terribly well.

The only real problem I have had with os x is with the community. From what I have seen it doesn't have nearly as much interest in sharing information as most linux communities do. I think often with os x when someone discovers a cool hack their first thought is to wrap it in a gui and charge $10 for it. Of course it could just be that I am just not looking in the right places.
With the reputation the gentoo community has I think you may find the os x community a little lacking.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:09 am
by JayBird
Ive got OSX running in VMWare on my PC...no emulation needed

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:18 am
by Chris Corbyn
Pimptastic wrote:Ive got OSX running in VMWare on my PC...no emulation needed
I've been reading about this.... doesn't that only work with a cracked version though? Especially if you have a SSE2 type CPU as opposed to SSE3. It makes for very interesting reading all the same. I don't want to steer this off-topic into talk about the cracked OS, I'm just curious id that's the only way it runs in VMWare?

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:43 am
by JayBird
d11wtq wrote:I don't want to steer this off-topic into talk about the cracked OS, I'm just curious id that's the only way it runs in VMWare?
In a word...yes