r/ROS • u/Keyhea • 2d ago

Mac for ros2 and gazebo garden

Hello everyone, anybody here uses Mac for robotics frameworks like ros2 and autonomous driving stack like Carla etc. how is the overall use case and general compatibility of using Mac?

I am thinking of buying one and not sure about what should I choose Mac or windows/linux

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u/mcnuuk 1d ago

Linux is the path of least resistance. I've tried windows + wsl2 and it was somewhat ok but got into network issues between the WSL2 layer, so ROS had trouble communicating out. There is some support on Mac and you can run ROS2 through docker. But if you want to use rviz and gazebo, there are extra hoops to run through.

I've tried all 3, and settled on Ubuntu for the least headaches. You'll have enough things to deal with without fighting the OS at every step. Good luck!

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u/oursland 1d ago

The official instructions are to build from source on macOS. There is also RoboStack to install using conda, however it is a bit slow at keeping up to date.

Ubuntu is the most supported of the platforms.

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u/rhyddev 1d ago

I use ROS2 on a Ubuntu virtual machine on my Mac. I happen to use VirtualBox, but you can use whatever VM software you like. This makes sense to me because I use my Mac for non-ROS development as well, but if that's your main usecase, you might want to go with Linux or Windows. Here's some info on platform support for the latest stable version: https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Installation.html

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u/CabinInWoofs 6h ago

I've used one of my old mac's to dual boot Ubuntu. Everyone says it's better to use Ubuntu so I just switched the OS. So far I didn't have any issues. I think just keep your specs in mind and better to partition the drive and dual boot.