So, you'd like to use a Mac for SoftDes? Welcome to the civilized world! This guide will tell you how to do it. These instructions will work for either Intel or Apple Silicon/M1 Macs.
Here's how it works: Unlike Windows, macOS is Unix on the inside. (Unix and Linux are, for the sake of this class, interchangeable.) So instead of juggling Linux/Ubuntu inside Windows, macOS can serve the role of both.
Warning: Do this at your own risk. Windows 10 on an Olin Laptop is the only officially supported platform for SoftDes. This is simply from my experimentation.
You'll want to have the normal setup instructions open too. They have lots of good information and explaination (most of which doesn't change for Mac). In particular, all of the "check" stages are the same.
Important: Any time you're told to open Ubuntu, instead you should open the Terminal app (if you can't find it, press Command-Space then type Terminal). Anything you can type into Ubuntu, you can type into terminal. This includes if you're told to open Ubuntu with GWSL.
- Download the normal Anaconda installer for Mac
- Skip GWSL — since you don't have WSL, it doesn't apply.
- Download VS Code and install it like any other app.
- Install the Python extension, don't install the WSL extension(s).
- You won't get the green box in the corner, but you should select the interpreter that ends in "('base': conda)".
- Follow the rest of the instructions as-is, but type into Terminal instead of Ubuntu.