Using the pre-installed SXDE VMWare image on MacOSX

As I mentioned in a previous post, you can download SXDE 01/08 as a VMWare image.

The download page, however, assumes you know what to do with the files (two large zip files) once you have them.

It wasn't that clear to me, although I figured it out after some searching around. I thought I'd describe them here for you.

• Unzip the two files. This creates two separate directories, with a number of files. Copy all the files into a single directory. Your directory listing should look something like this:
  

  
  SunSXDE108-s001.vmdk    SunSXDE108-s005.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmsd
  SunSXDE108-s002.vmdk    SunSXDE108-s006.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmx
  SunSXDE108-s003.vmdk    SunSXDE108.nvram        vmware.log
  SunSXDE108-s004.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmdk
  

  
  
• Edit the SUNSXDE108.vmx file and add this line:
  

  
  monitor_control.disable_longmode = 1
  

  
  
• Bring up VMWare Fusion, choose "File->Open" and point it to SunSXDE108.vmx

• Log in as "root", password "sxde"

• When you log in, it warns you you are logging in as a privileged user, and suggests you not do this. I wholeheartedly agree. But log in anyway, so you can create a new user account. SXDE very graciously starts up the user admin GUI for you to do this


• Log out of root and log in as the new user


• VMWare tools don't work completely so are not installed. This requires a fix from VMWare, which I hope we'll see soon. This is a cutting-edge distribution, after all...

• Fix the screen resolution. On my 17" MacBook Pro, much trial and error led me to pick 1680x1050 - not too small, not too large, just right.

• Then you can follow the various to-dos I wrote up on how to get going with NetBeans, Ruby, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, etc.

That should do it!