While we do not officially support Mac or Linux, several of our grad students have been able to successfully handle the coursework and projects while using these platforms. If using a virtual machine, make sure to use the supported version of Windows (better than Home Premium). Here are some of their suggestions and comments as guidance: 

 Mac Users

SAS Software Package – Use Virtual Machine

SAS will run using a Windows Virtual Machine on the Mac. VMWare Fusion and Parallels have been used by students. They bought the cheapest version of Windows and then purchased the Ultimate upgrade available through A&M.

Student comment:
“There are occasional issues with copying and pasting SAS output from the Windows VM to a Mac word processor. Text-only graphics and PROC FREQ output are the two that sometimes gave me trouble, and I had to either correct formatting issues by hand or print the output from Windows, scan it, and insert it in my homework file.”

R Software Package

R is available for the Mac platform. For ODBC work, a student used a third party driver by ActualTech that will open Access 2003 and 2007 files.

Word Processors

iWork (Pages) and Office for Mac (Word) work well. PDF conversion is built into the OS. MacTeX works as LaTeX. It integrates with iWork better than Office.

Linux Users

Student comment:
“For almost everything, including R, I’m running it natively on Kubuntu 9.10 — using LaTeX for homework (Kile front-end with Sweave integration with R).”

SAS Software Package – Use Virtual Machine

The same student from above is running SAS on a Windows XP Pro guest inside Sun’s VirtualBox on his Kubuntu machine. He set up the WinXP guest with the following settings: 1 GB RAM, 15 GB hard disk. VirtualBox allows for USB connectivity.

Thanks to the current and former students who contributed to this information!