Domino Designer 6.5 on Mac OS X
I present to you Beauty And The Beast:
What you can see is Domino Designer 6.5 running in Windows XP, which is running in Parallels, which is running on my Intel-based Mac mini.
In use this setup is surprisingly like actually running Designer as an app in OS X. You can Alt-Tab in the virtual machine, which takes you to and from Windows-based browsers and Designer. You can also Opt-Tab to switch between Safari and Designer. The difference is you don't see a Domino icon while tabbing between apps. You see the Parallels logo instead. That aside is works quite well.
While I wouldn't like to work this way all day when doing Domino-intensive development it's ok for emergencies if I want to make some changes without booting a separate Windows box. If you want a Mac, but can't live without Designer, this is a viable solution.
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Jake,
Completely agree. Of course if you need to use Designer in a more regular situation then you can always partition the disk and run Windows via Boot Camp as well.
At the moment I am using a small Windows partition in the office during the day and then OS X the rest of the time with Parallels where necessary. It works so well that I've basically consolidated all my machines down to the one MacBook Pro for all my needs!
Matt
Jake,
Did you do any other changes to Codestore other than the margins? Codestore seems to be making more use of my screen res. today.
As for the Parallels, it sure is competitively priced compared to VMWare. Is it stable and have you tried the Workstation version for Win/Lin ? I might switch if it's a solid product.
Cool.
Michael, it is a solid product. I use it on my windows workstation to emulate Solaris 10.
Michael. It's stable in that I've yet to see it crash. There's been a couple of odd happenings, but I'd expect them of VMs.
Re: Changes to codestore. That was/is an accident. I'll leave it as is and discuss tomorrow. Yes, the width and margins have changed. THanks for pointing this out - I didn't notice.
I just checked back with VMWare on their website and now they're offering a 'Player' for free. They also have a free server offering. It must be crippled somehow I guess. Maybe Parallels is shaking up the VM marketing landscape and hopefully, we end up the winners.
Why wouldn't you want to work on it all day? Is it slow or something?
Marcin. It's not slow. It just ... I don't know. I just wouldn't want to use it full time. Can't explain why really.
Using Paralells reminds me of using a Citrix client on a PC. The normal ALT-TAB sequence gets out of whack when you are moving between applications on the remote session, and your local desktop. Not a showstopper, but I avoid as much as possible.
I been talking about using virtualization software (VMWare and Parallels) for a while. Parallels for the last month, but you can develop and administrator you Domino environment on Linux the same way as on Mac Intel via Parallels.
Bootcamp is limiting in features. Jake has not touched upon this but with Parallels I can access files native on the Mac OS X file system. You can do that in Bootcamp.
Note: Yes VMware Player is free but you can only use it to run guast os'es. you still need VMWare Workstation to create the initial image. You also can not easily edit the guest os should any of the host hardware changes.
Vmware Server is very rock solid as well. I have a post on my blog how I decrease the number of physical computers in my home network via this product. I had GSX server previouly, but I move to VMWare Server and the processor is not killed either. My VMWare server is running on a AMD 64 759-socket (i think) 2.1 GHz, 3 GB RAM, and 1.5 TB of disk space. The hiost is runing Samba/Apache/MySQL/POSTGRES and 3 guests (Domino server, a shoutcast server, and an OS to learn or test -- the key is I don't need extra hardware. VMware Server runs best on a Gigabit LAN if you are going to remotely connect to the guest os.
In fact I am helping a friend to get a Gentoo workstation to run VMWare for Gaming and software development (including Domino).
My Linux desktop has been up for 70 days without a reboot and the Domino running a VMware Workstation guest has not been reboot except for the the Micrsoft Updates. My VMWare Server has had the hight uptime of 120 days without a reboot. I only rebooted it to test the VMWare Server 1.0 build to make sure the guest oses start when the host reboots.
feel free to ask via my blog if you have q's
Patrick
I agree... there's just something about using Designer this way that makes you "feel" like you shouldn't rely on it to be stable. That being said, its pretty stable. The biggest problem I've found is some accuracy issues with the mouse (see link below).
Other than that, Parallel's with Designer & Admin has allowed me to totally ditch my PC and do everything under one Mac-based hood.
{Link}
There are actually neat ways of building your images for VMWare using qemu. Note that qemu is only used to create the images, not run them (so slow your breathing :P). There's a great tutorial on this over at the ubuntu wiki.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VMwarePlayerAndQemu?highlight=%28vmware%29
Obviously it's for ubuntu, but Linux folks are usually clever enough that I imagine you could get it working on another distro without too much fuss. Don't use OSX, but much of the Linux world makes it's way over yonder, so you might want to give it a try too.
CrossOver Office for Mac is coming out. That might be an option for Domino Designer. The macMini looks more tempting than ever...
:-) stw