PC Keyboards in Mac OS X Lion

One of the benefits of the recent upgrade I made to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is how consistently simple using a PC keyboard now is. The preference pane for switching the modifier keys around (using alt in place of CMD, Windows key in place of option etc…) was available in Snow Leopard and earlier versions, but compatibility with the range of PC keyboards I’ve tried with my various Macs has long been a bit patchy – even though the changes would save in System Preferences, the keys would still use the default mapping.

If you’re used to CMD being either side of the space bar, it can get pretty annoying when it isn’t there.

In earlier versions of OS X, I’ve used DoubleCommand when there’s been trouble remapping keys, however I’m pleased to report that Lion seems to have addressed some of the earlier issues with the modifier preference pane being ineffective.

I’ve tested the modifiers with a range of keyboards (including ones I’ve experienced issues with in the past) and they all seem to be altering the maps without issue.

To alter the key map:

1. Open System Preferences and select the ‘Keyboard’ preference pane

2. Click the ‘Modifier Keys’ button and switch the mapping. When you’re done, click ‘OK’ and close the preference pane.

Choosing the right Virtual OS: Windows XP vs. Windows FLP

One of my favourite things about the ubiquity of multi core CPUs, broadband and gigabytes of RAM in modern computers is that virtual operating systems are finally viable. When I was growing up, trying out another OS meant multiple hard drives, partitions and the struggle of actually tracking down discs for these exotic digital curios. (I learned the hard way about making sure you’d partitioned a drive properly when I overwrote Windows 3.1 with a copy of BeOS I got with a computer magazine sometime in the mid-90s.) Thankfully, broadband can hook you up with pretty much any *nix OS in 10 minutes flat these days, and it’s one of my favourite modern software toys which gives you a no-risk sandbox in which to experience the object of your curiosity: the virtual machine.

I wrote a post at the beginning of this year detailing how to set up a remotely accessible cloud-y virtual machine using VirtualBox 4. Covered in that tutorial were the technical instructions for actually setting up the virtual machine itself, however I didn’t go into any detail about choosing an operating system to run on your brand new VBox (mainly because I specifically needed an XP machine at the time).

To serve as an interesting comparison, and also to segue nicely into my forthcoming (I promise!) series on the ‘OS less travelled’, this post will cover the differences in functionality and performance between ‘full fat’ Windows XP Professional and ‘semi-skimmed’ Windows FLP.

Windows FLP stands for ‘Fundamentals for Legacy PCs’, and is a slimmed down install of XP specifically designed for low-spec machines. You can read up on the OS itself at Wikipedia – but is it a viable candidate for a general purpose VM?

Test Conditions

Time to get (relatively) scientific. The two machines will be set up as per my guide with identical specs: 512MB RAM, single CPU, 12GB hard drive and 8MB VRAM.

(Handy aside: to get the specs of a VirtualBox VM, type ‘VBoxManage showvminfo XP’, where XP is the name of the VM in question, at the command line)

Installation

The installer for FLP is very different from XP. At the time of its release in 2006, Vista was about to ‘replace’ XP as the computing world’s de facto operating environment. Ironically, the design language of Vista, derided for its over-emphasis on power-sucking visual trinketry, has infiltrated this ‘low power’ Microsoft OS – you can see the modern Windows flag in figure 1, for example. The installer also has a full GUI, a pioneering feature for a Microsoft OS.

fig. 1

Figure 2 shows the installation type selection – I’m going for ‘typical’ in this case. The fully-GUI installation procedure allows very easy access to advanced installation options such as unattended installations and manual TCP/IP configuration. (more…)