Ubuntu 20.04 vm on macOS Catalina

Recently I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on my Mac Pro 5,1 running Catalina 10.15.4 as a host. It’s installed in a vm (VMWare Fusion). I gave it 3 cores of CPU, 20GB mem, and 80GB fixed virtual HD space. This thing is really fast. I had to do some tweaking to the UI settings to make the animations go away, I hated them because the virtual GPU was a little slow with those activated. Once I turned them off, BANG! Much faster.

I finally connected a BR drive to the vm and was presently surprised that I can easily RIP/BURN video quickly and easily in a vm. Who knew?

I must say, Ubuntu 20.04 look much nicer than it’s predecessors. I’m not sure how to install Ubuntu as a Rawdisk VM as I’ve never done that before, but I’m probably going to try that soon. I may do a native install and access it as a VM if possible, but that too is something I’ve never tried, so wish me luck. I suppose I could buy another 1TB nvram SSD just for the task... We’ll see what happens, I’ll post anything interesting.

Future entries...

I’m considering some serious modifications to my Coyote powered Mustang soon. I’m looking at a positive displacement supercharger, forged OPG/CS, custom headers, high-flow cats, much larger piping, and my current GT500 axlebacks. The clutch, MGW shifter, other suspension upgrades with have to wait. 

I’m waiting for the COVID-19 situation to improve before letting go of that much cash, but it’s going to happen soon.

Random Bits or Marking time

It’s been a while since I posted anything here so I decided to do just that...

Last month, a tornado touched down in my front yard and ripped a giant oak tree out of the ground. It caused a lot of property damage that I’m still trying to repair. My cars were all damaged and that’s been a nightmare as I’m a car aficionado and have some very nice sports cars. It was pretty heartbreaking and still is.

The new Mac Pro 7,1 has been released (Dec 2019) and I had intended to get one in the 2nd quarter of this year (2020) but now those plans have been nixed. Since my insurance turned out to be less helpful than I expected, I’ve had to do some financial tap-dancing and I’m still shuffling my feet. Long story short, no new Mac Pro for me this year.

MacOS Catalina is working perfectly on my Mac Pro 5,1 so that’s a good thing. I still keep Mojave on there full time with a bootable backup. After all, it is the latest “SUPPORTED” macOS for my machine, and the last to support 32-bit applications, so I should, and will, keep it around for a long time to come. In fact, even if I had a Mac Pro 7,1 , I’dl keep my 5,1 for many years to come. Likely until it totally dies and gets resurrected a couple of times. I really love my 5,1.

Otherwise God has been good. My budget is tight, but I guess that’s the new normal at my age. Hopefully it won’t be that way forever.

To Be Continued ...