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Free and Open-source Alternatives to Common Programs Revision History 1.0 - Thread created 1.1 - Thread revamped with new info and added links. 1.2 - Added Index (placeholder) Introduction With the advent of SteamOS, a good portion of gamers will likely switch to using it for their gaming needs. It won't really be long before more games start supporting Linux natively; newer games will definitely be supporting it as early as 2014, older games are constantly being ported over. Gaming on Linux is gaining momentum, but what about other productivity tools? Windows is still the king of OS's due to the wide range of applications natively supported, from Office to Graphics tools to 3D modelling, CAD/CAM and many other areas. Most of these applications are proprietary and closed-source and won't run on Linux natively. The purpose of this topic is to highlight some of the many free and/or open-source alternatives to many proprietary Windows programs. Free doesn't necessarily mean open-source, and that difference will be highlighted where applicable. Open-source software isn't restricted to Linux only - many of them can be cross-platform. Many of them can also be cross-compiled from Linux source to run on Windows. Proprietary alternatives are only included for programs that are both low-cost and worth paying for. One caveat to be aware of: The programs listed are merely alternative options to proprietary tools. In some specific cases, they won't act as replacements for the paid programs, due to paid programs having a vastly superior feature set. However, for the average user, the free alternatives are more than adequate. I personally tend to look at what people have done using the free alternative and compare them to the paid option, comparing their capabilities and not their specific feature sets. Of course, this may change in the future, due to the open-source nature of most of these programs: the necessary functionality can be added in my anyone. So, let's begin! Index 1.0 - Microsoft Office 2.0 - Adobe Photoshop 3.0 - Adobe Illustrator 4.0 - Adobe Premiere/After Effects 5.0 - 3D Graphics (Modelling, Animation) 6.0 - Digital Painting 7.0 - Development Tools 8.0 - Desktop Recording/Streaming 9.0 - Media Player 10.0 - Gaming 11.0 - CAD/CAM/CAE 12.0 - Torrent Clients 13.0 - Instant Messaging/Chat Clients 14.0 - Email Clients 15.0 - Linux Terminal-based 16.0 - Antivirus 17.0 - PDF Tools 18.0 - Virtualization 19.0 - Miscellaneous Microsoft Office Perhaps the most widely used and adopted set of tools for productivity. There are, however, more than a fair share of free and open-source options that are on par with Office, with one key exception: the free alternatives aren't capable of saving to .docx or any of the newer Office formats, but they are capable of reading them. That's not a major problem though: it's recommended to use the older .doc format due to being easier to work with. PDF is also a far superior format for sharing documents. Open-source 1) OpenOffice.org - This is usually the first option to come to mind, and it's been around for a while. Contains all of the replacement tools for Office. However, as some of you already know, it's somewhat lacking in features. Cross-platform. 2) LibreOffice - a fork of OpenOffice, with a wider range of features, and is more updated. I personally use this instead of OpenOffice and it's amazing. Cross-platform. 3) KOffice/Calligra Suite - Built into KDE. It may be possible to install it as a standalone application with the necessary dependencies. Contains a wide range of tools for everything Office related. Some older versions of KOffice is available on Windows. 4) TexLive - Alternative for MS Word. Specifically useful for Scientific documents (LaTeX). 5) WPS - Formerly known as Kingsoft Office, WPS is a newly updated version. Runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Linux, and capable of working with .docx and .xlsx files (compatibility and formatting issues aside). Exports to PDF as well, much like LibreOffice. Freeware/Online 1) Google Drive - Can't say much more. Full range of Office tools online, seamlessly synced between devices. Google has also been promoting QuickOffice, which is a set of tools available on Mobile devices with Drive integration. 2) OneDrive - Microsoft's own set of online Office tools, similar to Google Drive. Adobe Photoshop High up on the list of productivity tools used by graphics designers and digital painters. Open-source 1) GIMP - widely seen as the best Photoshop alternative on Linux. It is also cross-platform. 2) GIMPshop - Similar to GIMP, both open-source and cross-platform. 3) Krita - part of Calligra Suite. It's primarily a digital painting program, which Photoshop is capable of. Linux only, with an experimental version available for Windows. 4) Scribus - Specialized tool for creating publications. Cross-platform. Freeware 1) Paint.NET - An advanced version of MS Paint, but contains many of the basic features found in Photoshop. Available on Windows only, as it depends on .NET Framework. Adobe Illustrator Perhaps the best Vector-based graphics tools. Photoshop has some vector capabilities, but Illustrator is far superior. Open-source 1) Inkscape - great replacement for Illustrator. Cross-platform as well. 2) LibreOffice Draw - part of the LibreOffice package. Cross-platform. 3) Karbon - integrated into KDE in the Calligra Suite, making it Linux only. However, there are ways of installing KDE packages on Windows. Should be able to install it without KDE with just the dependencies. 4) Xara Xtreme - Looks to be an excellent Vector-graphic editor. Available on Linux and Windows. Adobe Premiere/After Effects These two are generally combined as each performs a specific group of tasks. Premiere focuses on editing, while After Effects focuses on compositing and visual effects. Most open-source options combine these features into a single application - which is great. Open-source 1) Cinelerra - perhaps the best option available. There are two versions, a community maintained one as well as an official one. The community version is called cinelerra-cv and is available on most Linux distributions. Not cross-platform afaik. 2) Kdenlive - Similar feature set to cinelerra, but more along the lines of Premiere. Kdenlive is available on Windows through a VM image. 3) OpenShot - Another option instead of Cinelerra. Primarily on Linux, but can be cross-compiled on Windows with the right set of tools (Cygwin, etc). 4) Avidemux - Cross-platform and open-source. Very simple video editing, and encodes in multiple formats. 5) LiVES - Available on Linux and OS X. Similar feature set to Cinelerra. 6) Blender - primarily a 3D modelling program (will go into more detail below), but includes a non-linear video editor. Runs on python, which is cross-platform. Freeware 1) Lightworks - there's a free and premium version available. The free version is free forever. So far, Lightworks is Windows only. The Linux version is in beta. There are many other free video editors out there. A Google search will reveal at least 10 other options. Autodesk Maya/3ds Max, Cinema 4D 3D modellers have perhaps used these applications. In fact, Cinema 4D's R15 was just released (as of October 2nd, 2013). Open-source Blender. I'm not even going to bother mentioning other options for now, as I have yet to find an option that beats it. There are plenty of projects out there done using Blender (Sintel is a perfect example of a short movie made entirely in Blender). It does everything you could possibly expect from it, along the lines of Cinema 4D and all of the other paid applications. Best of all, it's free and fully open-source. Corel Painter Perhaps the best digital painting tool out there. Has the widest range of brushes, painting media, etc. Open-source 1) Krita - mentioned it already. One of the best free digital painting applications available. Has excellent support for Wacom tablets. 2) MyPaint - similar to Krita. Cross-platform. 3) Alchemy - more of a niche program. Great for random sketching, doesn't have an undo function. 4) Gimp Paint Studio - Set of tools integrated into Gimp to provide digital painting tools, brushes, etc. Development Tools (IDEs) Microsoft's Visual Studio is probably one of the most common proprietary options, with development environments for C, C++, C#, among many others. On the OS X side, there's Xcode for developing in Objective-C. This section will list some of the alternatives to using the paid programs. Open-source 1) Eclipse - In my humblest opinion, one of the best IDEs available. Free, completely open-source and extensible through plugins. I've personally set my installation of Eclipse to work with Python, C, C++, Java, Android, and PHP/MySQL, and that's barely scratching the surface of the amount of development environments that can be integrated into Eclipse through plugins. 2) Code::Blocks - Another open-source IDE primarily for C++, but has a plugin system to easily extend functionality. Cross-platform. 3) Netbeans - free and open-source, comes default with the Java Development Kit, as an optional addon. It does support development environments for multiple languages. Freeware 1) Programmer's Notepad - Supports syntax highlighting for multiple languages. Windows only. 2) Visual Studio Express - The free version of Visual Studio. It's perfect for people who want to get started developing on Windows. Naturally, Windows only. Proprietary 1) Sublime Text - Technically paid, but a free, unlimited trial is available. It is cross-platform, and widely regarded as one of the best Text-based development environments. 2) IntelliJ - Specifically for Java and Android development. Cloud This is a pretty unique category, as there are literally dozens of cloud-based IDEs for various languages. I'll try my best to highlight some of the best ones based on languages supported. Feel free to link me to any Cloud IDEs you know of and I will add it to the list. 1) Cloud9 - Code anywhere. Free and subscription available. Doesn't appear to have language restrictions. 2) Codenvy - Free and premium subscriptions available. There are free premium packages if you plan on developing open-source projects (the way I interpret it). FRAPS/Dxtory, Xsplit By far the best video recording and streaming tools available. However, there are more than a fair share of free and open-source options. Open-source 1) Open Broadcaster Software - capable of streaming to Justin.tv, Twitch.tv and other streaming sites. Optionally, it'll also record to the HDD using a range of compression settings. While it is open-source, a Linux version currently doesn't exist. There is plenty of interest in a Linux version. 2) GLC - The Linux FRAPS. GLC is a bit tricky to install, but is excellent on Linux. Needs to be built from source. 3) Yukon - Similar to GLC. Needs to be built from source. 4) SimpleScreenRecorder - Name is self-explanatory. Supports desktop and game recording, as well as streaming to Twitch.TV and other streaming services. 5) Twitch Streamer - A minimal shell script designed to stream directly to Twitch. Captures from the X server directly. Freeware 1) FFsplit - a free streaming software available primarily on Windows. 2) MSI Afterburner - one of the best free options for recording gameplay. Media Players Everyone needs a media player, whether it's combined or just for music. Open-source 1) VLC - easily the best media player available. Also capable of recording the desktop and there's also the possibility of a video editor being added later on. Supports Bluray with some workarounds. 2) MPlayer/SMPlayer - along the lines of VLC. Cross-platform. 3) aTunes - iTunes equivalent on Windows and Linux. 4) Amarok - feature-rich media player. 5) XBMC - great open-source media player, capable of all types of media. Particularly good for an HTPC setup. 6) Audacious - open-source and available on many Linux distributions. Also cross-platform. 7) Clementine - cross-platform and open-source music player. 8) Plex - media streaming option along the lines of XBMC, but designed to run as a server. Ideal for a centralized media server and streaming to multiple devices (Mobile, PC, HTPC, etc). 9) Windows Media Player classic - plays a wide range of formats, specifically rmvb (RealPlayer). Simple and easy to use interface. A great alternative to VLC media player, but is Windows only despite being open-source. 10) Banshee - Open-source and cross-platform media player. Great replacement for iTunes (supports iPod syncing). 11) Apollo - A music player for Android. One of many options on Android. 12) MPV - Fork of mplayer2 and MPlayer, lightweight and easy to use. Freeware 1) Foobar2000 - IMO, one of the best and most configurable music players. 2) Winamp - This is only included because it's one of the more popular options. I personally would not recommend it, as it is more bloated compared to other options. 3) KMPlayer - Free media player on Windows. 4) iTunes - self-explanatory. Windows and OS X only, with alternatives above for Linux. 5) MusicBee - Free Music player available on Windows. 6) PotPlayer - Free music player for Windows operating systems. Gaming This section is perhaps no longer needed due to SteamOS. However, for games that don't run natively on Linux (and ignoring Steam's in-house streaming option), here are the best ways to get games running on Linux: Open-source 1)WINE - The easiest way, supports a wide range of Windows applications and Games. Check the AppDB for specific issues with some applications. Generally, anything rated Gold and above in their database will run well. 2) PlayOnLinux - essentially WINE, but with a simple GUI to make managing Games easier. Also supports various Windows applications. A full list of supported software is on their website. Proprietary I know the topic says Free/Open-source, but I feel like this deserves an exception: 1) Crossover - basically a paid version of WINE with better support. CAD/CAM/CAE Stands for Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing/Engineering. Prime examples of proprietary software are: SolidWorks, Unigraphics NX, Catia, ANSYS, Pro Engineer, AutoCAD, among many more. The following is a list of free and open-source alternatives. Open-source 1) FreeCAD - the perfect AutoCAD and Solidworks replacement. 2) OpenFOAM - The best open-source alternative to ANSYS tools (primarily used for numerical simulation in Structural and Mechanical Engineering). 3) Scilab - excellent replacement for MATLAB (which is cross-platform, while still proprietary). Scilab is the free and open-source equivalent based on Python. 4) Octave - very similar to Scilab and MATLAB. 5) Scipy - a python extension specifically for scientific and simulation-based calculations. 6) CAElinux - Should really belong in a section of its own, as it's an entire distribution built around CAE. Torrent clients The most common ones are BitTorrent and uTorrent, among others. Most of these clients are free, but aren't open-source. Some of them are more bloated than others. The following is a list of free and open-source clients. 1) Deluge - Great torrent client. I used it briefly; supports extra features through plugins. Cross-platform. 2) Transmission - Same as Deluge, free and open-source. Runs on many Linux distributions. 3) rtorrent - Generally installed through the repositories of whichever distribution. Terminal based, very simple yet powerful. Optionally, rutorrent can be installed to give it a web-based interface. These two are a very popular choice for a dedicated server running as a Torrent box (frequently referred to as a seedbox). 4) qBittorent - Cross-platform and open-source. 5) Tixati - Heard about this one more recently. Runs on Windows and Linux. Instant Messaging/Chat programs Not really a category that needs to be included, as most are free. However, not all are open-source. The only proprietary paid program I know of is mIRC, which is a commonly used IRC program. Some alternatives to mIRC: 1) Hexchat - an improvement over xChat. Cross platform (Windows, Linux) and open-source. Lots of features. xChat Aqua is an option for OS X. 2) Irssi/Weechat - minimalist IRC program. Not suited for everyone, but has a clean interface, and fun to tinker around with. Weechat is similar to Irssi. 3) Pidgin - mutli-protocol chat program. Supports IRC as well as many other common ones: Windows Live, Facebook, Jabber, Google Talk, AIM and many more. 4) Jitsi - similar to Pidgin, has some nice security features. Email Clients This section contains tools that run from within the Linux terminal, and don't exist as a standalone application. Nevertheless, they are quite powerful when used correctly. 1) Mozilla Thunderbird - probably one of the most well-known email clients. Cross-platform. 2) Claws Mail - An open-source email client for Linux. Cross-platform. 3) Mutt - Terminal-based email client. 4) Squirrel Mail - Personally used it to set up an Email server on a dedicated server (Kimsufi 2G), works wonderfully. Simple web interface for checking email. Linux Terminal-based Tools This section contains tools that run from within the Linux terminal, and don't exist as a standalone application. Nevertheless, they are quite powerful when used correctly. 1) Vi/Vim - excellent text editor for Linux. Comes pre-packaged with many Linux installers. 2) Nano - also comes pre-packed with Linux installers. 3) Emacs 4) cmus - Terminal-based music player. 5) Mutt - Terminal-based email client. Antivirus Generally not a problem for Linux due to its security features; however, there are some open-source and free options available for Windows, OS X and Linux. I haven't used the open-source ones below, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness. Nevertheless, I'll list them for people to try out. Open-source 1) ClamAV - Available as source code for various Linux distributions. Freeware 1) Avast - free and pro versions available. One of the most recommended free options. 2) AVG - same as Avast. Personally find it to be a bit bloated. 3) Microsoft Security Essentials - comes built into Windows 8, available for Windows 7 as well as other Windows OS's. 4) Malwarebytes - Anti-malware software. PDF Tools The following section contains software used to view and manipulate PDF files (annotations, editing PDFs, combining, etc). 1) PDFCreator - print to PDF, among other features. 2) Bullzip PDF - A printer driver which can be installed to print any document type as a PDF. Particularly useful for obscure file formats that can't be converted directly to PDF. 3) SumatraPDF - A free PDF and ebook (.epub, .mobi) reader. 4) Evince - A replacement PDF viewer that supports other file formats. 5) Xournal - free and open-source software specifically replacing OneNote or other Journal applications. Supports tablet PCs, and is able to annotate PDFs. 6) Stylus Labs - So far, of the Journal applications I've tried, this works the best in terms of writing performance. Xournal had an input lag that I noticed on Windows, not sure how it runs on Linux. Saves as .html files, with optional PDF export. Quite the quirky website design too. 7) PDFLite - PDF Viewer and printer (converts multiple formats to PDF). Source code is freely available for compiling on Linux. Virtualization This section contains software used for virtualization, whether it be development environments (virtual servers), or virtual machines. It's a fairly broad category. Some of the software under development tools were moved to this section to be a bit more accurate. The list includes free and open-source options. 1) Oracle's Virtualbox - the go-to option for free virtual machines. Supports a wide range of guest and host operating systems. 2) VMWare Workstation Player - available in Free and Pro versions (for commercial use). 3) Xen - Open-source virtualization, supports many guest operating systems and also supports various cloud platforms (OpenStack, etc). 4) KVM - another popular open-source virtualization program for Linux. 5) XAMPP - Web development environment. 6) Vagrant - creates a Virtual Server and sets it up as a development environment. Easily create and re-create (in any desired configuration) development environments to suit your needs. 7) WPN-XM - Web development environment built around Nginx (alternative web server to Apache), PHP, and Mariadb (faster alternative to MySQL). Miscellaneous This section contains mostly things that don't fall into the above categories, generally free. Some of them are cross-platform. Some of the summaries below may not be very accurate, so correct me if I'm mistaken. I've only used a couple of them in the past. 1) 7-zip - Everyone should have this, everyone should love it. Much better features compared to winzip and works with many different compression formats. 2) KeePass2 - encrypts and stores all of your passwords. 3) Xming - view/run X (Unix/Linux) based programs on Windows. 4) Cygwin/MinGW - Linux environment on Windows, can be used to compile programs from source on Windows. More involved, so usually ideal only for the tech savvy. Nice to have though, for people who want to tinker. 5) PuTTY - Simple SSH Client. Good for managing servers via command line. 6) Filezilla FTP - One of the best free FTP clients. Believe it also has SSH built in, but never used it. 7) Ghostscript/Ghostview - viewer/interpreter for Postscript, a programming language for creating vector graphics. 8) TrueCrypt - one of the best free disk encryption. Has automatic and real-time encryption of data. ---------------------- I haven't personally used many of the above applications, but it's a starting point for people interested in making the jump to Linux or SteamOS. Some of these options are a bit more involved to get running, but don't be afraid to get your hands dirty! It's an immense learning experience, and well worth learning.

Hello, I'm setting up an OS X 10.11 VM in VirtualBox but I'm having issues with booting it up. I followed this guide for doing it and used the vm image that came with it. I'm using version 5.1.14 r112924 of VirtualBox. When I hit startup, the vm window appears and it seems to work fine, but while still displaying console text, it just stops and doesn't do anything at all, not even any hard drive use in the vm. Here's a screenshot from a bit after it stops: The line that looks the most important is the 3rd and 2nd last lines, but I am not very familiar with Mac OS so I'll leave the judgement to those that really know what they're doing. How can I solve this problem and get the OS properly working? Thanks for any help.

I bought this mouse a month ago. Thought that I may share my user experience with you guys. Hardware wise this mouse is as good as it can get when it comes to wireless mouse. I have not use other high end wireless mouse myself , but, lets just put it this way, the ergonomic of this mouse is way better than my G502 as well as steelseries sensei. Left click and right click button is neither too hard nor too soft. The surface if the mouse is quite smooth, yet not slippery. (I have no idea how they did this) The scroll wheel is a better version of G502's scroll wheel. It is just perfect. Some people complain that the mouse is too big for them. But for me it is the right size. After using this mouse , there is no way, no way I am gonna get used to any other wireless mouse. Especially on OS X. Software wise, this mouse has A LOT to improve. (At least on OS X Sierra). After a week of usage the mouse started to have some connection issue. (Especially on bluetooth ) 90% of the time the mouse is working, but the other 10% can really drive you nuts. Here are a list of issue I encountered: Cannot establish a connection. (Via bluetooth) Cannot establish a connection. (Via Logitech dongle) After restart my mac, connection lost. Bluetooth/system preferences crashed just because I was changing connect method of the mouse and tried to troubleshoot. (Either it is this mouse driver issue, or OS X is not stable. But other than that, the system preferences NEVER crashed on me before. ) Also Logitech's support is quite terrible. You can go see their forum has a lot of people complain about connection issue. The bright side is that all these can be fixed (hopefully) by driver updates. How many of you guys bought this mouse??? How does it work on windows?? (I tried for an hour only, no problem so far. ) Do you guys encounter any similar issues??? Post your thought here.

I used to use a software that is called hazel to automate file sorting on my macbook. Here is one of the scenario: once a new pdf file is downloaded to my desktop, i ask hazel to automatically move that file into a folder that I pre created called : PDF collection. Can I do this using apple's own automation app?? If so, how can I do it? Hazel 4 is quite expensive and I don't really wanna pirate it. So.

Have been using this macbook pro since 2012. It was the non-retina version. I snapped a samsung 840 pro in it once the warranty expired. Here are a few problems I have encountered in the last 2-3 months. When connecting to external display, screen tearing happened. This happened a few times, sometime it was screen tearing, like there are a lot of little colourful tiles on the screen of the macbook pro. (Not on the external display). Other times there were a random spot on the screen (again on the macbook pro) will become grey. It looks like a water pool that has a color of grey. But, after a few seconds , the screen becomes normal. System freezing happened. It happened only once. But it was quite rare that this happened on the machine I got. I think less than 3 times, cos I don't even remember the 1st 2. Google drive installation failed. Apparently it can't find the location to create its "google drive folder". I think this had something to do with me though... cos I was keep changing the location..... The fans randomly kicks up. It gets really loud too. Here is some screenshots of it. Also in the 1st pic you can see that swap memory usage is as high as 1.5GB while normal memory usage isn't even full. Is this normal? I reseted NVRAM and SMC before. Did not help that much. Does any one of you had these kind of issues with your macbook/macbook pro/ macbook air? Is is because the hardware itself is starting to die?

My friend asked me how he could resolve this, but I really had no clue what was going on, because I'm not very familiar with Macs. The friend that's asking for help often gets asked to install windows through Bootcamp (a lot of my friends and his own Macs), and there hasn't been a problem like this so far. Here's the message from him: "I was doing a favor for a friend, and he asked me to reinstall a copy of Windows through bootcamp, but bootcamp was refusing to delete it. I had my own special way to delete it though, and you know how when launching the EFI boot to install Windows for the first time, a disk partition/delete/format part comes up? I used that to delete the obsolete Windows partition and also some other partitions that seemed to be useless. I had intentionally left two partitions alone: One called Partition 2, that I am sure is the Mac partition and another one called “OS X RESERVED”. But when restarting and holding down the option key, there was no option to boot up into Mac. There were only two options to boot into Windows, one that seems crashed and another that seems to want to install Windows again. Both are useless. So my question is how I can boot back into Mac? I am thinking I deleted some partition that allowed for Mac to boot up, thus it isn’t showing up. In recovery mode, I can see that there is in fact, both the partition that seems to still have files in it, and the OS X RESERVED." I'd really appreciate any input on this. Thanks

If lets say I have a macbook pro that is connected to 2 external drive. Drive A is a 1TB HDD and it is for my own usage. (photos and videos etc) Drive B is a 2TB HDD Timemachine back up drive. Can the time machine back up my external drive A and my internal drive at the same time? Also I've heard some user on reddit said that apple's time machine does not work very well with NAS/time capsule? Is it true? People who use time machine, did you connect your mac to an external drive? Or using NAS/ time capsule to back up? How does it work out for you?

So... here is the context of it: I am using my macbook pro more and more as my daily driver, so for 90% of the time I don't touch my pc. I used to game a lot, Starcraft 2, league of legends, witcher 3 etc. But nowadays I barely play games anymore. Nowadays I only play 2-3 hours of league every week. Sometimes even lesser. And if I want to play a few round of league, there are a lot of cyber cafe I can go to... I am starting to wonder whether I should sell my pc... piece by piece. I am sure that there is no way I can sell my pc as a whole. Unless someone who lives in my city is willing to come to my house and pick it up. At my country if I put my pc in a box and ship it to the buyer, by the time the pc arrived, I am pretty sure that the pc is damaged till the point that repairing it is impossible. Here is my current specs : i7-4770 16GB of ram (DDR3) Gigabyte H87 D3H motherboard Corsair GTX H100 all in one water cooling Sapphire RX480 Nitro 4GB vram 1 1TB HDD , 2 3TB HDD 128GB of SSD (samsung 850 evo) Corsair 780t full tower case Corsair RM650 powersupply The reason I should sell it: I felt that I am wasting a lot of resources here, putting it there and not using it. Especially with a RX480... Selling it can get some of my money back before the hardware started dying. My macbook pro's iGPU is kind of dying... if it dies, I can use some extra cash to buy a new one. The reason I shouldn't sell it: Technically you lose money when you sell a secondhand product. Better to use it until one day it dies. I could have a back up system at home just in case. Also there might be some inconvenience if I use a laptop for my daily driver, for example I have to connect 2 external HDD to my machine. (I am planning to save all my HDDs for storage.) What should I do?

So im going to start by saying I have little experience when working with Apple products. Okay, now to my question. So I got my hands on a Mac Pro 1,1 A1186. I Want to upgrade/update its firmware to the 2,1 so that I can upgrade the 2 Dual Core Xeons to 2 Quad core Xeons (either a pair of Xeon X5355 or a pair of Xeon E5462 which ever works better). Thats the bottom line. Ive tried looking at a few forums but end up getting lost quite fast. Here are the Specs CPU: RAM: OS HDD: 3 Extra HDDs GPU: 2 x Nvidia 7300GT (256MB VRAM) OS X: 10.7.5 I have alot of extra GPUs laying around, mostly older models but have more VRAM, Id love to get feedback on what I need hardware wise, preparation, and finally upgrading the firmware to allow the CPU upgrade. Thanks alot for all of your time!

Hi everyone. I have here an older macbook pro 13 inch. I can not access the normal operating system because something has been corrupted. Is there a way to create bootable OSX installation media without having access to a functioning Mac? I should also mention it is too old to install MacOS Sierra on it. I have looked tirelessly and any help would be greatly appreciated!

I just received an old Imac from a family member running os x 10.6.8. I'd like to do a factory reset, but no matter WHAT I do during startup the computer won't go into Recovery mode. I've tried pretty much every key combo I can find but no matter what it just starts normally. I'm currently using a Windows wired keyboard. I also tried using a wireless Windows keyboard but nothing changed. I don't know what to do. I don't have access to any OS disks that may have come with the system. Please I just would like to reset it. I'm more experienced with Windows so any advice would help. Thanks.

Hello So basically I'm looking to reinstall OS x onto my wiped macbook Pro but unfortunately my charger is broken and the only one I have available to me is a 45w macbook air charger, will this be enough to power a macbook Pro which is on around 30% battery until installation is complete?

Hello! For the past couple of years I've been dying for an OS X computer. I have always loved the way the os has looked recently and have tried to get one for a while. At this point idk what I should do and I'm not too knowledgeable with apple products yet so I need help in my decision process! Here are my options: My friend gave me an old 2007 Mac Book Pro A226 (I think) but it won't charge and I did not receive the power cable. I could attempt to replace the left logic board to potentially fix this issue but I've seen lately that this computer is VERY unreliable. Option number 2 is to purchase a Mac Pro Tower on Ebay which would come with two Xeon CPUS A1186 at 2.66 GHz, 4Gb RAM and a 7300GT Nvidia GPU (Could potentially replace with a 1050/1050ti) OR I can attempt yet another Hackintosh which I hate because I have no idea what I'm doing even when I look at forums. (Apple still hasn't supported the goddamn RX 480 yet) Or I could try to use a HP Pavilion Dm4t 2100 to run OS X. Anyone know if that would work?? And yes I know ya'll do not allow for pirated crud but I'm not asking about how to do it or any further info about it. Please consider it.

I am planning on getting a bluetooth mouse for my macbook pro. When I used the G502, the scrolling wheel works quite fine physically , but the scrolling speed (especially when using to scroll in browser) is not consistent. Also the g502 was too "hard" for me, like I have to reaaaaallyyyy click the buttons to make it work. (When compares to my previously owned steelseries sensei of course.) I want to ask you guys how does the master feel on OS X??? A LOT, I mean a LOT of the mouse have great driver support on windows but when it connects to mac, everything feels different and it is just not that responsive anymore. Also the scrolling wheel won't behave as smooth as apple's own magic mouse or trackpad. That is my biggest concern. Does the mx master has great software support?? Is it buggy??? The reason I am buying this is because I do some programming exercise as well as photoshop on my mac. And track pad is mostly what I use, but in photoshop and IDEs or even text editors selecting some little specific things can get annoying when you are using a trackpad. If you use a MX master on mac, please respond.

HI, I am making changes in my life and want to change password mangers. I was using lass pass. I really like the features. The issue, I have with them is privacy. I am very private and prefer. Hosting everything myself or using a service recommend by prism-break.org. The keepass question, I have is can anyone recommend a secure option for syncing. all of my passwords to all my devices with keepass?

Hello everyone! I am a young photographer and videographer and I am starting to amass a lot of data. I recently had to run out and buy a 3tb lacie external drive and I am more than half way through it already. I have a limited tech background but I do know about NAS setups. So I have been on the hunt to build one and my research lead me here. So here is what I need some help with: I want to build a NAS for MAC. Ok so the first thing you all should know is I am poor. I cannot afford a $600 Buffalo Terastation. Or anything else on this list: http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/nas-for-mac,2-750.html Also you should know I do have an Apple Timecapsule and it is terrible for what I am doing. I actually had to move all my images and videos off it because they would bog down the timecapsule to the point it would restart. If it's at all possible to build something that can grow with me, that would be amazing. Currently I have a MacBook Pro but I am In the early stages of building a Hackintosh. Thanks in advance for any help. Oh oh and one last thing if anyone can suggest a great router to network all of this, that would be great. My timecapsule drive failed

Hello to any MacOS experts, I am currently in the process of repairing a friends 13 Inch Mid 2012 MacBook Pro (Model 1278) after the Apple Store quoted over AUD$400 to replace the internal HDD with a 250GB SSD (That Apple magic smoke does not come cheap). After replacing the horrifically slow 5400 RPM HDD that came in the system, I proceeded to replace the current, dead HDD and replace it with a 250GB Samsung 860 EVO. After this, I proceeded to boot into the Internet Recovery utility and proceeded to format the SSD as HFS+ for use with OS X Mavericks (The operating system the recovery tool attempted to install) and start an OS X installation. After about 6 hours of waiting for the OS to install, I was greeted with a screen showing me that the installation of OS X Mavericks had succeeded and all that was left to do was restart the system with this handy button provided. Upon restarting the system, came the first issue, upon the restart, I was greeted with a flashing grey cross (as can be seen in an image attached). Thinking this was just a failed installation, I proceeded to reformat the drive and attempt the installation again, but without success, once the system restarted, I was greeted to another flashing grey cross. This time I enabled verbose startup and took a photo of the errors that appeared (images attached). After this, I have tried to install MacOS Sierra, MacOS High Sierra, and MacOS Mojave all with similar results. Does anyone have any solution or tips to help in solving this issue as I have not been able to find much help on the Googles (not in English anyway)? I hope the pictures below also help in solving the issue. Thanks, Kale04

I have a problem with running OS X Mojave on Virtualbox with a Zen 2 CPU. I'm certain I've once run a macOS VM (although not Mojave) on this CPU, but can't get it to work again. Using the classic - VBoxManage modifyvm "machine" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7–6700K" makes Virtualbox give the Critical Error. Running the VM without this command just makes it hang at End RandomSeed. Does anyone have a solution, or is running Mojave under Virutalbox on Zen 2 a lost cause? I'd quite like to keep the image vanilla, to know it's not compromised. The image I use is created on my MacBook and it boots fine on the Mac just not when I transfer it.

So... i have a an samsung galaxy s7 with no root, so i was simply wondering is there any way to emulate os 8 / 9 (macintosh) On android, Mini Vmac only support mac os 7, and KEGS is system 6, and not fully custumizeable. And limbo PowerPC for android ive tried all the emulators listed for download on their site. So i anyone to tell me how or if its possible i have iso installers from WinWorld

So I have 2 windows 10 pc and one 2008 Mac Pro. I have my laptop connected to the Mac Pro via Ethernet so I can use the Mac as a server and the Mac has two Ethernet ports but when I connect the sff desktop (dell optiplex 960) it won’t find the Mac at all on the network tab but it works fine on my laptop

Guys I have a MBP mid I was having Sierra before but due to some compatibility issues I went to bootcamp. I am running windows 7 Ultimate 64bit but I am having an issue with Chrome it used to run Buttery smooth in OS X but in Windows Its super laggy IDK why but only browsers face this issue otherwise the Windows is running flawlessly. I have tried forefox too but it also works slow Need help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I only use this thing every few weeks or so since I do most of my work on my desktop but I booted it up because I was going to make a Hackintosh but before I had even started downloading anything I walked away from the system for a few minutes when I came back it wasn't at the log in screen when with a white background. I can log in as a guest but every time I try to log into my account it sends up this screen (attached picture). Please help! I really need want to make this Hackintosh.

Hello, I have an entry level mid 2014 13" MacBook Pro retina. I use adobe CS6 creative apps (Ps,Lr,Pr,Ae,etc.) I want to buy a graphics card to run through thunderbolt. what is the best bang for the buck, price to performance graphics card I can use like this on Mac OS.

I have an old 2007 eMachines running Windows Vista, but my computer has started to slow down. Specs: Model: ET1161-07 Rating: 3.0 Windows experience index: unrated CPU: AMD Athlon Dual Core 4050e RAM: 3 GB System Type: 32 bit only

I am hoping to add another SSD to my Windows machine and just load macOS onto the SSD and then be able to either boot from the Windows drive or the macOS drive. I wanted to make sure this was possible and see if anyone had any tips before I actually buy the drive. I mainly want to do this for editing as my laptop, although it's pretty much the fastest 13 inch macbook you can get, isn't really super smooth with 4K video editing. I have glanced over some compatability lists and found that most, if not all, of my build will work with macOS. Except perhaps my 1080, which I think I can get special drivers for. Any advice or tips are appreciated Edit: I was also wondering how easy it would be to boot from each drive whenever I want using BIOS, like would I have to change the default boot order every time?