Running on outdated systems and macOS

[El Chapo]

My apologies if this isn't the correct area in which to post this, but as there are topics in this area that deal with issues running both the Linux AppImage and, separately, running on a modern-ish macOS system, I thought that my experiences might be useful for those who have had issues with either (or both) of these approaches.

My system is a Mac Mini that runs OS 10.14.6 (Mojave). Since Apple long ago made native Java support an headache, I don't try running the macOS flavor of the M.U.L.E. program. Instead, I decided to try the Linux AppImage running inside a Linux Virtual Machine (VM), and it has worked very well with only one recurring issue that is, in general, easily avoided.

My Virtual Machine program is Parallels Desktop for Mac. The VM I set up is a Kali Linux instance that is given modest hardware parameters: 2 CPUs, 2 GB RAM, and 128 MB graphics RAM. In order for the VM to act as an host for games, I had to assign the VM the ethernet MAC address of my Mac's ethernet port and configure port forwarding on my router, as would have been necessary for any other setup. Parallels makes setting these hardware parameters very simple. The final setting that needed tweaking was the graphical resolution of the Kali Linux VM, which is set to 1400x1050 and looks great.

The one recurring issue I have to be cautious about avoiding is an occasional video "glitch" that can completely lock up the whole Kali Linux VM and is 95% likely to be unrecoverable when it occurs. Of the two-dozen or so times I've encountered it, I managed to fully recover the VM system once. Almost all other occurrences required a complete rebuilding of the VM from scratch, which stinks, or deletion and replacement with a copy from a backup drive.

I try to prevent this problem from occurring by carefully limiting the times at which I switch from the full-screen view to the chat-screen view. Every time the problem has occurred, it's been triggered by switching out of full-screen mode while a player is moving around the map or inside the store during a deployment phase. When I switch to/from full-screen mode while everything is relatively still, I don't trigger the system lockup.

If anyone would like help duplicating this setup on their own Mac, please feel free to ask for assistance in this thread.

BTW: The Kali Linux version I installed is the (now outdated and hard-to-find) 2021.1 release. However, I've tested out this same approach on later versions of Kali as recent as the 2021.4 release and everything worked just as well. The only difference is that the older .1 release builds a much smaller VM file, whereas the .4 release (with identical installation options in the Kali system configurator) winds up being about three times the size as the .1 VM. My VM requires about 8 GB of disk space to begin with and has now grown to about 12 GB. In order to keep the VM file as small as possible, and to make sure the AppImage will run correctly, I don't do any updates within the Kali Linux environment. This VM's single purpose is to run M.U.L.E.

Semper Games!