I like having a Ubuntu install handy to play around with. It’s already on my PC as a VirtualBox image, but 3D acceleration refuses to work, so I can’t upgrade it beyond 12.04 as there’s no more Unity 2D after that and upgrading prompts dire warnings about terrible performance. I decided to try installing 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) onto the Mac with VirtualBox.
Installing VirtualBox was easy. Download the Mac versio and drag it to the Applications folder. That’s generally the case for installing Mac apps, although some of the newer ones can be obtained from the App store, just like for mobile devices.
Creating a new image, mounting the ISO file and installing Ubuntu was no problem. In fact, the install wizard seems to have been streamlined a bit.
However, running it was a different issue. Opening the ‘Start’ menu took ages as it slowly fades in, and just getting it to go away took another eternity as it slowly faded away. A bit of Googling revealed that the problem was a lack of 3D acceleration. That apparently causes it to use the CPU to render the graphics, leading to terrible performance.
The solution was found in this forum thread. Basically, install the VirtualBox extensions, install guest editions, then insert the line ‘vboxvideo’ to /etc/modules
Reboot and check that 3D is supported with the following command.
/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -pIf that shows all green, everything should be running much smoother!
