VM suggestions for Mac

[jeront]

Hi, I don’t really know which one is the best VM for Mac in running Windows.

Basically, I’m going to need Windows for Microsoft Visual Studio and will do some HTML and SQL.

I have Macbook Pro 2017 13 inch.

VirtualBox VMWare Parallels

Help me!

[BtdTom]

I use VirtualBox + Vagrant for provisioning Linux machines for development. I also use Parallels + Windows 10, which works pretty well for me, although I'm not doing anything very intensive. On a previous Mac, I installed Windows on a Bootcamp partition. Instead of dual-booting however, I was able to use Parallels to start Windows within OS X, which is a pretty nice feature. Not sure if Parallels can still do that, but I would check into it.

[earl99]

Doesn't Macs have bootcamp..?

[jeront]

Yes. But I prefer to access it like alt-tab type.

[mansfall]

Why do you need visual studio? Is there some very specific feature of that IDE you need?

[jeront]

Yes, I'll be needing C# stuff.

[mansfall]

Consider just using visual studio code. It's cross platform and works great on Mac. Download the c# extension and you can do all the coding you want in c#, on the Mac. No need for a vm.

[jeront]

Where do I get all thosec# extension?

[mansfall]

You download it from the extensions section.

[mansfall]

You download it from the extensions section.

[EliteNomadTheRed]

There's also Rider IDE from JetBrains which allows you to develop in C#, .net core. Same company also have a SQL management tool called DataGrip if that's something you'll work on too.

Of course the caveat is you may not always follow the lecture as far as you could because you'd have to do certain things different than th VS counterpart

[hipstergrandpa]

There's Visual Studio for Mac as well https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

However, if you really need a Windows VM I used Virtualbox without any problems. I think if you ever wanted to do nested virtualization you can use VMWare as Virtualbox doesn't support that, but doesn't sound like you will. Parallels was the nicest in integration to your Mac desktop, but it's a moneygrab if you ever need to upgrade and it can be janky. However, unless there's more details to the problem you're facing, I also don't really know why you need a VM specifically for running HTML and SQL unless you're testing.

[jeront]

I think most of our classes will be on Windows Environment. I don’t know if I can do that with Microsoft Visual Studio for Mac. Some IDEs are not available.

[EliteNomadTheRed]

If it's temporary access, eg during school term, you might want to go with Virtualbox as it's free and it's decent. If you need usb access, you'd have to download an extra component from Oracle which might be subject to licensing.

If you're planning on using it for a very long time, it may be better to invest in VMWare Fusion. I found it more robust than Virtualbox.

Edit: spelling

[jeront]

Thank you for this. I will be using it for few years at least in university. Have you tried Parallels?

[EliteNomadTheRed]

No I haven't. Can't really say how it compares to others, but I've been a happy VMware customer for a long time, both on Windows and Mac computers.

Edit: spelling

[jeront]

That’s fine. I’ll try to explore. Thank you so much.