Daniel Hardy

In writing my last article about the various search engines I came across a fun site called Ubuntu Popularity Content.    This site shows the number of downloads and installs for every package in the Ubuntu repository.  It is certainly an interesting look at what people are using and if you are an Ubuntu users I suggest you take a look, maybe you will find a great new package.

Yesterday my wife’s computer finally croaked. We decided that the best option was to build a desktop replacement form scratch. This can be a nerve racking experience as a Linux user because you never know how well every items will work with your distro of choice. I ended up with an ECS 6100SM-M, AMD BE2300 (45watt) processor, 2GB of OZC PC6400 RAM and a Pioneer DVD/R/RW. None of these components are amazing but they all work perfectly with Ubuntu 7.10 and the computer is surprisingly fast. My boot time out of the gate was a brisk 28 seconds and I haven’t even began to tweak the system to improve this time.

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

This last week Innotek released Virtualbox 1.5 which is a major move forward for this free virtualization system. One of the best features is the easy to use implementation of seamless virtualization. It allows the user to integrate their two operating systems in one nice interface. While this is not a new concept as Parallels has been doing it for a while, it is new to a free, cross platform application (to the best of my knowledge).

To get it up and running all I had to do was update my VirtualBox install and then press “Host(Ctrl) + L”. Next thing you know your Windows task bar will appear at the bottom of your desktop(I moved mine to the top). You are now free to access windows applications as if they where a GTK application. There is one thing that doesn’t work smoothly as of yet. It appears that Beryl/Compiz style compositing applications don’t get a long so well with this seamless integration. It is hard to say who is at fault in this case but I am sure it will be resolved in due time. Until then I am happy dealing with the problem or simply turning off Beryl.

What do other OEM’s think about Linux running on their machine. This story is from Germany but it gives you an idea of what the big manufactures think about Linux.

read more | digg story

“I took a screen shot of it.. because many of us thought that Dell would put the Ubuntu Machines 2000 pages deep into their site.. and only have it there to appease linux users. In fact, they are putting the Linux boxes on the main page of Dell on the rotating script.” - TheFounder

This is truely amazing! Linux is being pushed by a major vendor. Other vendors like HP have tried sell Linux machines in the past but none of them have made a push this strong. Dell has been in trouble for a while and perhaps, although unlikely, this will help revitalize their sales.

read more | digg story