Counting down 2 days before 2007. I think I have made the greatest contribution to my job as a Sun Ambassador: Getting Solaris running parallel with Mac OS X. I feel so proud of myself now and here I will be giving you some information about running Solaris on your shining Mac.
Hardware Requirement
Don't get me wrong! Not every Mac can run Solaris smoothly! I don't mean that "not every Mac can run Solaris", but "Some Mac requires more work to run Solaris". So here, I am going to list out the hardware requirements for getting Solaris running on your Mac:
- Intel Mac (MacBook, MacBook Pro, Intel iMac, Mac Pro, Intel Mac mini)
- 512MB RAM (1.5GB+ recommended)
Yes! You need a lot of RAM to run this. 400MB of RAM is required to run Solaris' GUI installer and you need some RAM to keep your Mac OS X alive. This is really the minimum requirement. I suggest that if you really want to do something fancy, please and please get 2GB+ RAM to do it.
Software Requirement
You should be on Mac OS X Tiger since it comes with your shining Intel Mac. Now, that's that. If you have ever used Virtual PC for Mac before, let me tell you this; Parallels Desktop for Mac is a totally different thing! Why do I say it is different? I am telling you. The performance you get is whatever you have in your metal enclosure! Virtual PC was a nightmare, but not Parallels Desktop for Mac. It uses what's called Visualization to run guest OS together with your Mac OS X. Just try it (It's free to try for 90 days) and you will see what I am talking about. You will be amazed. But! remember to have "enough" RAM and that's it.
Other Requirements
I am sorry that I have to tell you the reality, but you need some money to do all these:
- $80 for Parallels Desktop for Mac
- $599+ for an Intel Mac
The Good News
So, the good news is that you are not the only one who tried to install Solaris on your Intel Mac. This means that someone has walked through the entire process for you already and you just need to read through their guidelines, including this one.
Besides, Parallels provides some supports for installing Solaris on your Mac as well! I believe they will be supporting Solaris more thoroughly in the future.
The Bad News
The bad news is also Parallels is only supporting Solaris partially at this moment. So, you need to sort of tweak a little bit of here and there to get it working. Please follow the links below to do what's necessary and don't try to skip any of the steps listed below.
Steps
Don't get me wrong (again :P) I am not writing to tell you how to do it. But if you follow what's listed below, you will get it. And if you have any questions or if you run into any troubles, you can always leave a comment here and I will get back to you. So, here are the steps:
- Install Parallels Desktop for Mac
- Click on the Parallels Desktop for Mac icon to fire it up
- If you didn't do anything fancy, you should now see the wizard asking you if you want to install a new guest OS. You will click on Next here.
- Now, when you get to the step that asks you how would you like to install the guest OS. You will choose "Custom OS Installation" here.
- Then select Solaris and Solaris 10 from the drop-down menu and click next.
- Now you need to adjust your RAM allocation, which should be at least 512MB (WARNING: don't try to allocate all of your RAM here. You will suffer from running the entire process as well as your Tiger. Leave at least 512MB of RAM for your Tiger)
- I don't know which step you are on right now, but once you get to the disk allocation page, make sure that you allocate at least 24000MB for Solaris at this time (you can scale it down a bit later).
Now you just need to follow the instructions and you will be able to get Solaris installed on your system. But!! This is not done yet. You will need to look into the following link after you are DONE with your installation and you will see what I am talking about:
That's it! And now you can do whatever you want to your Solaris now. One thing that I have to mention is that don't try to download the DVD segment distribution of Solaris. It will only bring you troubles. Download the CD distribution of it.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year and Goodbye for now :)
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Posted by Jim Grisanzio on December 29, 2006 at 07:20 AM EST #
Posted by c0t0d0s0.org on December 29, 2006 at 12:32 PM EST #
Posted by UNIX-WORLD NEWS on December 29, 2006 at 01:41 PM EST #
Posted by Kunal on March 24, 2007 at 01:58 AM EDT #
Posted by Jim Lucore on April 26, 2007 at 04:22 PM EDT #
Posted by Daniel Che-Yi Chu on April 28, 2007 at 07:25 PM EDT #
That was a good one. But I have my own experiences with Solaris/Linux/Mac/Windows (multibooting).
Now I would like to go for Fusion, but is that FREE anymore? Looks like one needs to buy that one?
Posted by Sukhoi on December 22, 2007 at 04:35 PM EST #