My daughter is starting a college computing course next month and has been told they will be using linux.
She has a fairly recent, last 5yrs or less I think, intel macbook but knows nothing about linux or vm's.
I advised her to install Ubuntu in a VM when she asked about it, she asked how to do this. Initial thought is Virtualbox but I've not used MacOS since well before it became MacOS nor used VirtualBox in many years, have heard of new shiny new things like UTM, Parallels & VMWare.
Is it a reasonable suggestion to just use VirtualBox? Is there a better option?
Bit of a dad moment; "Just install Linux and then I can help you", "But how do I install Linux dad?"
If possible, buy an old Thinkpad for 50-100 bucks and install on a real hardware for the best experience.
I have no experience with any Mac hardware, but Virtualbox has improved a lot during the years. It won't have accelerated graphics, but still fast and responsive.
At that point, don’t buy a damn thing and simply partition the HD and dual boot it so both OSX and Linux run natively. That’s what I did way back when in uni
I'm not sure there is a need to run linux on bare metal, or carry around a second laptop.
Just so you know, running it on bare metal on an Intel Mac is also quite easy using Bootcamp (which is preinstalled and guides you through the install process)