Kubuntu and Parallels

While I was away, Parallels brought out the release candidate of the virtual machine software for Mac OS X. Now I think I might have found the perfect Linux OS to run within a Parallels VM.

I'm still thoroughly impressed with Parallels - so much so, I haven't touched VMware for months. I've also never booted into Windows XP through Boot Camp again since I first tried it out after release.

Why?

I don't need it - Parallels absolutely rocks at whatever I throw at it. THe majority of the time I'm running Linux, mostly Gentoo, because the source based installation system suits my needs for testing and building development environments.

However, I was looking for a desktop Linux environment to test. I've been a long time user of the Kubuntu distribution, but largely in a LiveCD mode, rather than an installable option.

However, this week, I decided to downloaded the Kubuntu installer. I'm impressed with the installer, that is almost entirely hands-off - you are asked very few questions, apart from some essentials, and the installation is more or less over. The whole process took just over 10 minutes within Parallels, running on my 17" iMac.

Kubuntu, as the name suggests, uses KDE, and it boots straight into KDE and is ready to use in just about a minute.

Once inside, it's a joy to use, especially within Parallels, which makes it so quick for the majority of tasks, you'd be hard pressed to spot a difference between running it natively and the virtual machine mode.

Parallels users who want a desktop Linux to run should use Kubuntu. And readers who have been wondering whether Parallels is any good, you really need only use Kubuntu in a virtual machine to be convinced.