Midnight Commander, well guys how you not like the Midnight Commander, seriously?
This is the kind of application that you install by default and never use.
And right from there is asks you if you want to install it right away or you want to try
it.
We want to try it, so we are going to to press "Try elementary".
Hey guys and welcome to a new episode of Nomadic Dmitry channel.
In this video we are going to try different Linux distros on a Mac.
And to be specific it's a Macbook Pro 2014 and I know this is not a modern machine, but
still it's very suitable to run the Linux distros and it runs those blazingly fast,
so why not try it?
I also thought why not try it?
When it comes to running alternative operating systems on Mac many people say that Mac is
intended to run Mac OS and that's it.
I totally disagree with this opinion because it's fine to boot any Linux/alternative operating
system on that machine.
The only problem with running Linux on Mac (Apple laptop) is that battery life is not
great.
When you run Linux on Macbook battery life is not good indeed.
That's an unfortunate truth and if you are concerned about the battery life and you use
your computer on a battery then you might consider using Mac OS or even Windows for
that matter.
Battery management on Windows is not that bad.
But when it comes to running different Linux distros we have a lot of questions, for example:
which specific Linux distro I need to choose?
In this matter I would divide Linux distros in multiple categories:
4 categories to be specific.
One category is those distros that have a specific toolset.
For example - Kali Linux.
Kali Linux is intended for penetration testing.
It has a lot of tools for network administrators and sysadmins.
It's really good for that reason.
This is the first category, next category is beautiful/glancy distros like Elementary.
We are going to be trying this one as well, actually both Kali and Elementary in this
video and you are going to see for yourself.
Then the next category is distros intended to run on low-spec computers, as well as on
the high end spec machines.
Those Linux distros don't have much graphical stuff, but at the same time it just does what
it should do - perform necessary tasks.
This distros is called antiX.
I actually used antiX to rescue the boot of my SSD drive which has a Linux installed,
you can see a video about it.You can consider running antiX if you actually want to have
a super-fast Linux experience on your Mac.
And then it's a general purpose Linux distributions category.
It's either Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu or any other other distro
that is based on Ubuntu.
When it comes to running Linux on not only Mac, but any computer it's all about what
exactly you want - which tools you need and for that reason you can start with any distro
you feel passionate about.
Let's go and check those distros.
The first distro we are going to try is Kali Linux.
As I said this one is used by network administrators, penetration testers, etc.
Let's start this distro and you can see that I have the rEFInd boot menu here.
I installed it before and I'm going to select a Kali Linux there.
I'm going to pick the first option "Live System" and it also has the option to install it on
a physical hard drive.
We just want to try it, so I pick the first option.
Quite beautiful splash screen.
Ok, so it booted and we can explore the OS.
It has a terminal on the upper left panel and you can use it.
The main thing here is that it has a lot of system administration tools.
It has "Information Gathering", "Vulnerability Analysis", "Database Assessment" - lots of
tools.
It's really good for educational purposes.
You can learn a lot about networks.
AfterI finish with this video I'm going to explore Kali Linux more.
"lspci" command shows the devices that you have on your system and the main thing is
that if you have a Broadcom Network adapter it frequently has a problem to work after
you boot into Linux unless you install a specific driver.
I need to install a specific Wi-Fi driver to have a network there.
And that's the problem with using those distros on Mac, at least the live version.
This driver is proprietary and you need to install a specific package to be able to use
Wi-Fi on your Linux distro.
I have provided the command to fix Wi-Fi on the Mac in the description down below.
So if you want to have a network connection (and probably you do) take a look at the description.
All you need to do is either to download this package for offline usage or you can use another
machine to download it (e.g another computer) and then use it on your Mac.
The same thing goes for the right click, you can see the same set of Applications there.
That's a lot of tools right there.
What about file manager?
Nice one.
What else?
I saw a WireShark app here.
Wireshark is the great utility to perform a network package analysis and it's great
that they have included it.
Once you have the internet connection this Kali distro becomes a powerful tool to do
a good stuff!
Please only do good stuff there.
This distro is great for learning information security, network technologies, etc.
Let's shut it off and try another distro.
The next distro we are going to try will be antiX, let's see if it's actually the one
or not.
Yes, this is antiX.
We are in the boot menu, which you already saw from my previous video about rescuing
your Linux installation on your Mac.
Check it out if you haven't seen it.
It's probably useful for you.
But let's actually run this live CD, live thumbdrive version.
I'm actually glad that we don't have and live CD/DVD versions anymore and we run those distros
straight from flash driver.
Here it is.
I love the simplicity of this distro.
As you can see we have a stats box on the right side of the desktop which displays memory
and swap usage.
And it runs super fast.
It has web browser, editor, bunch of other stuff, Terminal.
Anything that you need actually.
It has games and DOSBox integrated right there.
You can do word processing, type right from there.
Lots of fun!
Surprisingly it doesn't have a VLC there.
It runs too fast in my opinion, once I move the mouse away it immediately jumps to a next
item.
Multimedia, programming categories, lots of tools.
It is great, but it has the same problem - the wi-fi is not detected on many Mac computers,
but the solution is the same - you just need to install the specific package to enable
it for a Broadcom hardware.
Also, once you install it on a hard drive frequently it installs this wireless driver
by default and you don't need to do anything.
This package is included there if you enable installation of proprietary drivers.
Don't worry, install the Linux on a hard drive and if wireless still doesn't work - use the
command in the description.
It also has a very simple file manager as well.
It works super fast and if you go to the Terminal and type "htop" it is going to show that memory
usage is very low.
325 mb out of 16 gb in my case.
It runs very fast on modern hardware.
We are going to shut it down and switch to another distro.
Next distro is elementary OS.
The splash screen is really nice.
I tried elementary OS before couple of years ago and I didn't used it extensively and I
will tell you why.
It keeps booting, it takes time.
And right from this menu it asks if you want to try elementary or install it on a hardrive.
We want to try it, so we click "Try elementary" button.
Pick any language option if you want to have a language other than English.
As you can see right away it's very similar to Mac.
All those icons at the bottom looks similar to Mac and this is the reason why I haven't
migrated to this OS.
It looks too similar to Mac that it doesn't feel like you actually switched.
It tries to emulate the Mac interface too much.You feel like you installed a Mac, not
Linux.
Default web browser is Epiphany and one thing to note - once you launch it, the bottom panel
goes away automatically which is a nice feature.
What about Calendar?
Calendar app has a nice UI.
Nice set of apps included here.
At the same time this simplicity is a bit annoying for some users, like myself.
It all depends on the user.
It also has an AppCenter which has an interesting App model.
It's similar to App Store, but you can pay any amount of money for the app, there are
no mandatory rules there.
If you want the app to cost 5$ - you only pay this amount, if you want it to cost less
- you pay less.
Easy as that.
Not sure about the free option.
But I was able to get elementary OS for free by typing 0 in the download box on the website.
I guess the same goes with other apps.
This driver (bcmwl-kernel-source) is actually the reason why Wi-Fi doesn't work until you
install it in the system.
The elementary OS allows you to use the UI to install that driver easily.
Linux doesn't like proprietary software and this is the reason why the don't include this
driver in the first place.
Nice option!
In elementary OS this driver is included and once it downloads it I will have a working
Wi-Fi.
This is exactly the driver that I need for my machine.
And you can just select a necessary network there and it works.
Another option is to download it manually (.deb package file for Ubuntu) and install
it.
I like the interface overall, but as I said it feels a bit too simple.
It also has GParted included which is a great utility comparing to Mac Disk Utility.
It also has a Code text editor there.
Not sure what app is that, though?
Is the name of the app "Code"?
Terminal and Videos apps included as well.
Again, same question - I don't even know the name of the app.
It's too simplified.
Is this something written specifically for elementary OS only?
This is how it works with elementary OS.
It's very suitable for beginners and people who like simple, minimalist UI.
We are going to shut this down and try the last distro for today.
The last distro I have for you today is Kubuntu.
It's the one I'm using primarily on my computer.
This is the one I like the most (I guess).
And Kubuntu is installed on my external hard drive, it's not "Live" version of operating
system.
It's actually installed on the hard drive.
Here is my Kubuntu installation I like the KDE interface (comparing to GNOME).
You can pick any desktop environment you like, but I especially like KDE.
It fits my needs, that's why I prefer it.
Default applications are impressive too.
Firefox by default, but I have installed Chromium.
I just like Chromium and I'm also using Brave browser - check it out if you want.
Graphics.
It has GIMP installed by default, Blender, Okular.
I actually like Okular.
I like this PDF reader and I was wondering if it's available for Mac or not.
Inkscape - verctor graphic editor.
Lots of good stuff here.
Utilities.
Midnight Commander.
This is the utility that you install and most likely never use (or use occasionally).
The system monitor is good (but I got used to "htop" resource monitor).
You can see CPU, memory usage, etc.
Comparing to Mac or Windows it's not using any memory (small amount of memory - 400 MB/
16 000 MB).
It runs very fast on my computer.
Here is a deal.
If you don't want to install Linux on your internal hard drive, then install it on external
hard drive and use it - no problem at all.
The file manager by default is Dolphin and it's nice one.
The terminal app is Konsole (default KDE terminal app).
And for the office it uses Libre Office.
Typical office stuff.
For you the Kubuntu is what I need exactly.
You can pick any distro that you like.
There are a lot of those you can pick from.
Just install those on your flash drive and try how you like it.
You can have multiple flash drives and compare those.
Pick the distro from those 4 categories depending on what you want.
Another option is to configure your Mac to be looking similar to Linux.
This is also one of the ways many people use it.
They don't want to install Linux and instead they set up their Mac to have an environment
very similar to Linux.
They just install utilities on top of Mac.
I will talk about this in the next video.
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See you later, guys!