Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Installing and Running Mac OS X on Linux Using VirtualBox

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:40 AM PST

Installing and Running Mac OS X in Linux Using VirtualBox: Are you in the mood to install Apple's Mac OS X 'Snow Leopard' on Linux? If your answer is yes, then get your desktop ready and download the latest version of one of the most popular free and open-source virtualization software, VirtuaBox.

But before installing VirtualBox, you should check first if your CPU supports hardware virtualization. From the Linux terminal, run this command:

$ egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

If the command returns "vmx" (Intel) or "svm" (AMD), then your CPU is supported thus you will be able to install and run Mac OS X as guest operating system on Linux. For others, you may also check your BIOS settings and see if there is an option to enable hardware virtualization.

If your CPU is supported and you have already downloaded and installed VirtualBox, you will need to get the hacked Mac OS X Snow Leopard installer from HERE. It's a torrent file so for those of you who don't know anything about torrents, see: How to Use BitTorrent in Linux.

Inside VirtualBox, you can now create a new virtual machine. It is recommended to allocate at least 15GB of virtual machine hard disk and 1GB of VM RAM for better performance. The Mac OS X installation process should be as easy as that of Windows or Linux so I'm sure most of you can handle it well.

The above instructions on installing and running Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) on Linux is pretty much a shortcut and is intended for advanced users. There is a more detailed how-to HERE, which uses Windows as host OS. However, most of the instructions from that page can also be applied if you are using Linux (host) so I encourage you to check it out.