There is a third option called Virtualbox which is free but its more difficult to setup and has known issues with 3D acceleration which may make using Gazebo problematic. Though if you’re a student you can get student pricing. Download and install VMWare Fusion (8.5 is what I’m using), I know of another virtualization option called Parallels but that is known to be more expensive than fusion in the long-term.Ubuntu Version: Lubuntu 14.04.5 (Lubuntu has all the goodness of ubuntu without the heavy add ons, good for virtual machines where you want to minimize resource consumption). (I tried in El Capitan and it worked there as well). Hardware: Macbook Pro Retina 15″ Mid 2015 (Model 11,5) running macOS Sierra. Another issue is that the latest linux kernel doesn’t play well with the Macbook’s hardware, e.g., I could not get my machine to shutdown and it would get stuck which meant I would have to hard shutdown by keeping the power key pressed. That being said, I learned from a friend about the wonders of virtual machines, so here’s what I did.

Having a linux dual boot on a mac is doable and I have done it in the past (see instructions if you’re interested), but I just felt that giving up hard disk space for another operating system with a limited 512GB of storage is not something I wanted to do. I primarily use a Mac for my work, but since a I do a lot of robotics I have to switch over to Ubuntu to use ROS.

Macos virtualbox ubuntu