VirtualBox - extremely cool!

[Dr. Z]

Right, remember ages ago I posted about how you can use SeamlessRDP and a hidden VMWare virtual machine to get windows apps served directly to your Linux desktop? Well, tonight I shall show some of you something even better

Its a freeee app called VirtualBox (its in the apt repositories and everything). Install it and it behaves largely like VMWare workstation - except something is different. I had a handy copy of Server 2003 knocking about, so I bunged the ISO into the software (oops!) and installed away. DAMN its fast. This CPU doesn't even have the newfangled virtualisation support and still its flying. Its almost as fast as it would be running on the bare metal. Impressive.

Then, there is the equivalent of VMWare Tools. Install that and things get better. A previously greyed out menu option is now available and things look very much like this:

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-seamless.png



Also, the remote side of VMWare, which is pretty cool, is sorted out via the RDP protocol - so it just works which is very, very cool and will allow me to run Ubuntu on some thin clients, which is the very best thing ever (I have tried to get a number of RDP servers working with X before, all of them failed).

This development might have single handedly removed Windows from my main desktop because I now have the option of the very best of both worlds and at a decent speed.

[Daz]

Originally Posted by DRZ

A previously greyed out menu option is now available and things look very much like this:

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-seamless.png

What option would that be old bean?!

Also how does it work with resource mapping? Sound, drives etc?

If it works really well I could consider moving my work machine to Ubuntu. I've pondered doing that anyway but I'd struggle without Outlook - the Evolution connector wasn't quite there last time I looked, and I just like Outlook anyway.

[Dr. Z]

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-control.png
www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-settings1.png

There you can see the basic settings pane, more or less like VMWare really.

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-drives.png

Drives can be files like VMware and can be either a fixed size or expandable. I quite like the way you set them up as master/slave etc. You can of course simply pass it an existing drive with Windows on and have it boot that.

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-cdrom.png

Again, pass it your actual drive or give it an ISO. This is something I need to play with because it seems like what you do is "register" an ISO with virtualbox and it then allows you to swap CDs easily, but I don't think you can add a CD to the collection whilst the VM is powered on.

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-network.png

The networking bit is the least noob-friendly part of it all. NAT is fine, that just works but to get bridged networking on the go requires you to know how to set up and bridge a TAP interface. Not the most user-friendly thing ever, I am going to get around to setting that up today I think. Shouldn't be all that tricky but I think I need to script it and then pass the script to VirtualBox because its about 15 steps to get it set up.

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-sound.png

Sound can be passed through to the sound driver of your choice, ALSA or PulseAudio if you are using 8.04 alpha.

Lastly, something I am investigating at the moment is the shared folders aspect of this. At the moment, I can't seem to get it to work, but I'm not sure what I am doing wrong!

Here is a screenshot of the setup pane for it anyway:

www.statichiss.co.uk/virtualbox-control.png

There are a few small niggles with the seamless mode, such as if you accidentally hit show desktop it exits seamless mode and goes into fullscreen mode but with no option of getting it back into seamless mode. You have to open a window, give it focus, exit fullscreen mode and then enter seamless mode again.

If its important, its worth noting that my virtual machine only sees one CPU, not two. Not a biggie for me but it might be for some of you

[Daz]

I'm actually having a play using the Windows x64 build at the mo, installing Gutsy. It's not as fast as vmware under Windows, but I was expecting that. Has many of the vmware options and functionality, with some gains and some losses but it's certainly comparable. Interface isn't as slick but it's perfectly functional.

The built in RDP server is excellent, really like that. The networking doesn't seem as flexible but I've not properly looked at it.

Gonna see if the seamless stuff works the other way around - Ubuntu guest under Windows host. Assuming thats even supported anyway.

[Dr. Z]

From everything I have read, using linux as the host is THE way to do it. Seamless mode only works for Windows guests sadly

[Desmo]

Digging up an old thread, but have just been looking into this and so did a search

I've hardly used Vista in ages since installing Ubuntu but the Vista partition takes up most of me hard drive space. I'm thinking of wiping it totally, giving Ubuntu all of the hard drive and then installing Vista into virtualbox for those little things I might want to do (or just to play around with).

[Daz]

Does the seamless option work with Vista then? That would be cool.

[Mark]

If it does, and even better if it'll do seamless from a Windows host, then I might be convinced to demote VMWare Server from my systems.

PS - I see it's in Portage as well.

[Desmo]

Dunno In fact, I know nothing about any of this but I'm going to do it anyway

OK, what's the best way for me to do this? Basically, I need to dump my Windows partition and give that space to Ubuntu. I'd rather keep my current Ubuntu install if I can. Is that possible?

If not, I'll just re-install Ubuntu and repartition the drive then.

[Daz]

2 ways really. Delete the doze parition, and use gparted on the Live CD to resize your Ubuntu partition, or backup your Ubuntu parition from a live CD and restore it after repartitioning. In either case you'd probably have to sort the bootloader out.

If it's not going to be much hassle I'd reinstall tbh with another OS involved. Backup your home directory and all your files/settings will be maintained, you'd just have to reinstall any extra packages.