Now when we have the hardware in place lets go through the process of installing the software we need. The first thing we have to install is the virtualization software that enables us to run multiple operating systems on top of Mac OS X. There are several offers but I have choosen Parallels Desktopfrom Parallels Inc.
Installing Parallels is no different than installing any other OS X program that uses an installer. Double-click the installer, follow the prompts, and wait for it to finish. After installation, you'll find the program in the Parallels folder in the Applications folder. Behind the scenes, Parallels has installed quite a few things on your machine, including a kernel extension (a low-level tool that modifies the core of OS X) to enable its magic.
The next step is selecting the Linux distribution we would like to use. All CAD vendors tell us they only support RedHat Enterprise Rel 3 or 4 but that doesn't stop us from using our favorite Linux distribution. I will use Ubuntu 6.10. Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community of developers and its small size (it fits on one CD) makes it perfect for our usage.
The file is 700MB so try to find a high-speed connection.
Start Parallels Desktop and click the "New VM" button. Click the Next button in the window displayed. The next window will look like this. Select "Create a typical VM" and click the next button.
Select the guest OS to be used. Set guest OS type to Linux and guest OS version to Debian Linux and click the next button.
The Configuration Editor window will be displayed. In this window you can change the configuration of the virtual machine. Select the CD/DVD-ROM setup to specify the image file to be read during installation. Select "Use image file" and enter the full image file name .../ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso. You may also want to change the size of the memory from 256 MB to 512 MB if you have at least 1 GB installed in your Mac. If you need more than 8 GB hard disk you should also change the "Hard Disk" setup. When finished click "OK".
Start the virtual machine by clicking the green triangle. The installation will now start and in a few minutes the Ubuntu installation startup window will be displayed. Double-click the install icon to continue the installation. Then there a is six step process to define the default language, the time zone, the keyboard layout, username and password and to prepare the disk (erase all). From when you click the install button the whole installation will take less than 15 minutes.
After the installation has finished you must restart the virtual machine. Before restarting, edit the setup and change CD/DVD-ROM back to default. The Ubuntu Linux will start and you are ready to login.
