Unix as a Guest under Windows
If you'd like to try BSD without repartitioning your disk or buying another PC, you can run it under Parallels Workstation for Windows or Parallels Desktop for Mac. Below is a screen shot of a Mac Mini running PC-BSD under Parallels, which is running Windows 2000 under Win4BSD. Performance wasn't pretty with this nested emulation, but both Parallels and Win4BSD run the guest OS at near native speed as long as you don't try anything insane.
I've run PC-BSD and Debian Linux under Parallels on both Windows and Mac OS X with good results, and in fact use PC-BSD regularly on my Mac for ports development and testing. The guest OS image is highly portable between Windows and Mac, so you can build a generic PC-BSD installation on one machine and distribute it to both Macs and PCs.
The CPU speed for the BSD guest is almost native. The main limitation is graphics speed, since the guest OS is using a virtual graphics card that draws to a Window on the host OS desktop. Graphics speed is not a problem for most applications, but for the more demanding 3D applications like SUMA, Caret, or FreeSurfer, you'll need real graphics hardware to achieve a comfortable speed for normal use.
You'll need a reasonably fast PC running Windows XP, or any Intel-based Mac, with a gigabyte of RAM and a few gigabytes of available disk space + room for any data you plan to store on the guest OS. When initially creating the PC-BSD guest within Parallels, be sure to set the virtual disk maximum size large enough for your future needs. I recommend a minimum of 20 gigabytes in order to have room for several fMRI applications and some data. The disk image on the Mac/Windows host will only take as much space as your guest OS actually uses, and will not grow beyond the limit you specify.
For convenience, I've created a Parallels image of PC-BSD for download here. Note that this is a 3 gigabyte file, so please avoid downloading between 9:00am and 5:00pm US central time. ( 16:00 to 24:00 UTC ) If you don't have a fast connection, it may actually be quicker for you to install PC under Parallels yourself. ( Use the installation path for a typical FreeBSD 6.x system. ) Installation under Parallels on a Mac takes less than 1/2 hour.
