Charlie B
sage
Reged: 03/22/08
Posts: 241
Loc: Virginia
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I have been wanting to install Linux on my Windows laptop for a while, but I did not want to partition for a dual-boot system. I have that on my desktop already. One of the Yahoo forums mentioned this software (which is free) and I decided to try it.
I installed SuSE OpenLinux on my Windows Vista laptop using the VirtualBox. It seems to work fine, with a few caveats. The Linux software,downloads and updates work fine. I have not been able to access my USB external hard drive yet. I need to read the manual to be able to switch my bluetooth mouse back to Vista as the process is not intuitive. Overall, I'm happy with VirtualBox.
Many times in this forum I've seen people unhappy with xyz OS or complained that the computer that they bought came with an OS installed. With VirtualBox, You can install several different OS and use the one that works best for your software. I may install Windows XP next so that my Meade software works again.
Regards,
Charlie B
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Meade SN-8, DS-90, AT-66
DSI Pro II (Schuler Filters), DSI-C, LPI, Canon XTi
AIP4WIN, Nebulosity, DSS, Registrax, GIMP
running on Dell 1420 with Vista
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Hmm, this deserves a good look. Thanks for posting this. 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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stefsaber
Post Laureate
Reged: 06/24/06
Posts: 4721
Loc: Rainy Florida
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Very stable system put together by Sun. I put it on my parent's Ubuntu system and have it running XP for any programs that don't work on linux. Does a nice job of managing system resources. There occasionally can be some goofiness with trying to access usb devices. USB drives have some issues being recognized, make sure they aren't mounted in your native operating system when you first plug them in. Also there should be in the lower right of virtual box an option to turn on and off all usb devices. Try flipping that on and off and the device should then load!
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-Stefan
"A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams
Current Scopes: "Gator" William Optics 66SD---Black Swan William Optics Megrez 80 II ED Triplet---Zhumell 10" Dob
-Sirius Mount---Canon Rebel XT-
Past Scopes: ETX 90---Vixen ED80Sf
Fort Myers, FL
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Charlie B
sage
Reged: 03/22/08
Posts: 241
Loc: Virginia
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Thanks! I'll give it a try.
Charlie B
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Meade SN-8, DS-90, AT-66
DSI Pro II (Schuler Filters), DSI-C, LPI, Canon XTi
AIP4WIN, Nebulosity, DSS, Registrax, GIMP
running on Dell 1420 with Vista
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daev
Graveyard Shift
Reged: 03/10/04
Posts: 4998
Loc: On the edge of the desert
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I'll be looking into this as well... wine doesn't like a lot of the astrophotography software (or rather I'm deficient in my manipulation of wine) and I'd love to be able to shell XP for them.
dave
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"Yes, I know it's flat here. When the seeing is good you can stand on a beer can and see Toronto...."
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Can't get Windows XP to see my USB dongle. Seems there is a bug with the rights somewhere in the OS so I may go to bootcamp to solve this.
USB mouse works even though the virtual box says no USB devices are attached. Odd.
Video works pretty good but nvidia says I don't have a nvidia device - guess the virtual box causes that.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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daev
Graveyard Shift
Reged: 03/10/04
Posts: 4998
Loc: On the edge of the desert
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Quote:
Video works pretty good but nvidia says I don't have a nvidia device - guess the virtual box causes that.
That's been a long standing beef of mine with virtualization. I'd love to run some gamnes in an XP shell, but a lot of DX stuff just won't run.
dave
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"Yes, I know it's flat here. When the seeing is good you can stand on a beer can and see Toronto...."
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psonice
super member
Reged: 07/24/09
Posts: 162
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I've been using vmware heavily for quite a few years to do the same thing. Virtualisation is seriously great. These days I have a mac, with XP and linux running in virtual machines, all my needs are covered.
Some stuff I've discovered along the way:
- Most of the virtual PC's hardware is "pretend" hardware. It won't have the same hardware that you actually have - e.g. my vmware box says I have an AMD net card, when it's really an intel one. And the video card is a "VMWare SVGA II", instead of the ATI Radeon. What this means is that installing windows/linux/whatever is easy, as the VM software supplies drivers for its virtual hardware, but you lose a lot of hardware features.
- 3d/games/etc are hit and miss. The "paid" packages like vmware and parallels do have some 3d support, and a lot of games do run. But it's generally the older games that are supported, the latest and greatest either won't run or will run very slowly. The cheaper/free packages often just have basic 2d support.
- You can run lots of VMs at the same time, so long as they're not too busy and you have enough RAM. Here at work, I'm running 2 VMs with XP, 512MB of memory and a single CPU core each. They run fine generally, only getting slow if say I boot both at once so they're fighting for hard disk access. I have a dual core CPU with 4GB RAM.
- VM boxed have the best feature ever invented on a computer: a real 'Undo' button. I test lots of software at work... when it goes wrong, I hit the "revert to snapshot" button, and in a second or so I have a fresh, working install 
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Could not get the snapshot to work in Virtual Box - a very useful feature for sure.
I may have to look at VMware again. Got burned with it a couple times on Windows (lost my entire hard drive when W2K was the host - not a fun day).
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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stefsaber
Post Laureate
Reged: 06/24/06
Posts: 4721
Loc: Rainy Florida
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I ran VMware on my mac, but eventually opted to go with the dualboot. XP was nice and fast, but the graphics were lacking. If you can get trial versions of the virtualizer program (cant remember if vm has such a trial), do try them out first. On another machine, VMWare refused to acknowledge my cd drive. 
They all have their little quarks, usb devices seem to make up the bulk of issues.
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-Stefan
"A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams
Current Scopes: "Gator" William Optics 66SD---Black Swan William Optics Megrez 80 II ED Triplet---Zhumell 10" Dob
-Sirius Mount---Canon Rebel XT-
Past Scopes: ETX 90---Vixen ED80Sf
Fort Myers, FL
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Before proceeding, how invasive is this VM host? On the same level as VMWare? (which is OK)
thanks in advance
-drl
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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What do you mean by invasive? 
What is the host OS you are thinking of using?
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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I mean removable from Windows XP COMPLETELY without any fuss. I would be running SuSE 11.x and Solaris 10 x86 in the VM.
-drl
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Good question. With Windows you have that darn registary and it's hard to say if an uninstall will remove all the bits in there. Too many programs don't do that.
I'm using it in OSX so a removal is as simple as trashing the application. Same goes for Linux.
You make a good point, it's one of the things about Windows that really bugs me - removal is not as straight forward as it should be or could be.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Quote:
I ran VMware on my mac, but eventually opted to go with the dualboot. XP was nice and fast, but the graphics were lacking. If you can get trial versions of the virtualizer program (cant remember if vm has such a trial), do try them out first. On another machine, VMWare refused to acknowledge my cd drive.
They all have their little quarks, usb devices seem to make up the bulk of issues.
I set up a user running VMWare on Linux with Windows VMs - in full screen mode the graphics were indistinguishable from "reality". The VM was so real it was - real.
-drl
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Well I'm pretty d____d impressed! Didn't even have to restart Windows - I'm gonna call this "FreeMWare"  I have a second hard disk with a standalone SuSE 11.x install - we'll see if I can run it directly from a Windows VM - setting this up under VMWare was always a pain..
-drl
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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I switched to Bootcamp - easier than trying to debug the USB rights issue for the vitual machines. But it was pretty darn slick.
Keep us posted on what you think.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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StarWars
Postmaster
Reged: 11/26/03
Posts: 13815
Loc: CyberSpace
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According to a good friend of mine (Senior Software Engineer) tells me Vbox and VM ware is used for R&D plus testing typically in the Linux environment ... 
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Sony Digital Media player..
MX 460 earbuds
Celestron 2x Barlow Lens
Orion Collimation Eyepiece
Rigel Quick Finder
Assorted Bino's 
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psonice
super member
Reged: 07/24/09
Posts: 162
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Yeah, virtual machines are used very widely for development. Here's roughly why:
- You just have one PC for development
- You have a bunch of VMs with different OS/software combinations. This replaces the room full of PCs you used to have with the same range of OS/software.
- You test your code out regularly. After, you want a clean install so you can test a fresh installation of your app. You just hit the big "revert to snapshot" button, and it's clean in 2 seconds. Before, you had to get your imaging CD out and spent 30 minutes doing this.
- You want to test for a bug. This means installing the app, spending hours getting it to the right state before you can start. At this point, you hit the "new snapshot" button, so you can test and then put it back to that "just ready" state. Before, you had to format the disk and start from scratch each time.
Just those few examples show how your productivity can go up by maybe 1000% when you're doing testing. This is why we love it so much
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Quote:
Well I'm pretty d____d impressed! Didn't even have to restart Windows - I'm gonna call this "FreeMWare" I have a second hard disk with a standalone SuSE 11.x install - we'll see if I can run it directly from a Windows VM - setting this up under VMWare was always a pain..
-drl
THe import of this is interesting - it means they can map ring 0 processes onto ring 1 for the x86 architecture, while handling the inevitable exceptions. Since this is a VM, it's not bound to time in the processor sense - so you can scan ahead for coming changes and intervene.
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Greg K.
Reged: 12/11/03
Posts: 11543
Loc: Clifton Park, NY
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Quote:
I switched to Bootcamp - easier than trying to debug the USB rights issue for the vitual machines. But it was pretty darn slick.
Keep us posted on what you think.
I haven't tried VirtualBox yet (downloading it now) but VMWare Fusion it's easy to manage USB ownership. Each device has an icon on the status bar and it can be enabled/disabled for the VM from there. Of course it isn't free like VirtualBox or Bootcamp.
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Astro-Tech AT111EDT f/7 - Celestron CGEM
NexStar 11 GPS
Orion SkyView Pro 8EQ (w/ Autostar mod)
15x70 Celestron SkyMasters
Orion 90mm Mak
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Virtual Box is similar. No workie. 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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Charlie B
sage
Reged: 03/22/08
Posts: 241
Loc: Virginia
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The virtualbox's usb filter recognized my USB Maxtor drive fine. After starting SuSe 11.1 with the USB drive disconnected, I connected the USB and SuSE recognized and mounted it. I could see and read all my external drive files fine.
Thanks!
Charlie B
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Meade SN-8, DS-90, AT-66
DSI Pro II (Schuler Filters), DSI-C, LPI, Canon XTi
AIP4WIN, Nebulosity, DSS, Registrax, GIMP
running on Dell 1420 with Vista
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Good news! It runs an existing physical istallation of SuSE 11 - that is, already installed on a standalone hard disk. Of rourse, it's like putting that disk into another computer (the VM) so the udev entries, graphics card, etc. will be wrong, but you just enter the root and resume devices on the GRUB boot entry. You can then set up a hardware profile to tell SuSE you are booting from the VM and not directly and choose the right hardware in that. That allows booting either directly or in the VM without fuss.
Unlike VMware, you can only create a raw vmdk disk file with the command line tool VBoxManage, e.g. on Windows with SuSE on the second hard disk
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename SuSE.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1
You then attach this vmdk to your VM and presto, it boots right up!
I'm extremely impressed by this software. I'd sell my VMware stock
-drl
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Hmm, makes me wonder if I can run my XP partition that way too. Dang, that would be cool. 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Even the manual is first rate:
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html
There's a lot of stuff in there about USB not working, for those having issues.
-drl
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psonice
super member
Reged: 07/24/09
Posts: 162
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Ron: I run my bootcamp partition in vmware like that, so it's very likely
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StarWars
Postmaster
Reged: 11/26/03
Posts: 13815
Loc: CyberSpace
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Ron,
I don't think VBox will install on your Trash-80 ... 
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Sony Digital Media player..
MX 460 earbuds
Celestron 2x Barlow Lens
Orion Collimation Eyepiece
Rigel Quick Finder
Assorted Bino's
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Oh man, I never had a T-80. 
Thanks for the tip on the manual. Hope to have to some time this weekend.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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daev
Graveyard Shift
Reged: 03/10/04
Posts: 4998
Loc: On the edge of the desert
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Ahhh... the TRS-80... cut my teeth on assembly on those.
dave
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"Yes, I know it's flat here. When the seeing is good you can stand on a beer can and see Toronto...."
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Rob Willett
Vendor (Degree Circles)
Reged: 02/07/05
Posts: 653
Loc: London, UK.
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I run VMWare Fusion on my Mac Book, VMWare Workstation on my Windows XP laptop and VMWare ESXi on a server at home.
This allows me to have the right environment for doing the job, e.g. for home use we use Macs for everything BUT we need a couple of Windows applications for some uses, oddly enough managing a VMWare ESXI server which is a contradiction for me, but hey ho.
The laptop acts as my main development environment for the Setting Circles website that some of you have used. This VMWare runs CentOS which is then deployed into the VMware ESXI server for live use.
I find that VMWare to be in all instances reliable and fast. On my Macbook (4GB 2.0Ghz dual core), I can run Mac OS X, Windows XP and Centos 5.2 with virtually no slow down on the Mac.
The Windows XP just runs a small instance of Centos (256MB) and I never notice any slowdown at all.
The ESXi server runs, a boot manager, a firewall, two fileservers, a web server, a mail server and a database with no effort at all each in it's own dedicated VMWare instance. It's an older AMD 64 bit dual core machine with 4GB RAM and 2TB disk.
The point of all of this is that VMWare and it's associated software rivals, Parallels, MS Virtual machine, Virtual Box etc allow you to get far more specialised about how you operate and run your own IT system. Sometimes Windows is the best way to work, sometimes Linux or Unix is, if you have a decent emulation facility then you can have your cake and eat it. Linux on a virtual machine runs great, Windows is not so good as it's quite graphics intensive. Mac OS X can just about run in a virtual environment but there are loads and loads of issues, not least of which is the legality of this outside VMWare Fusion.
My experience is VMware and Parallels, I've paid money for both and continue to pay money for VMWare. Well worth it and well worth looking into to work out what it could do for you.
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Thanks,
Rob
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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I was almost sure VBox would be inferior to VMWare, with which I have pretty extensive experience. Not at all - this is a fantastic VM hosting application - I'm really stress testing it (right now it's on my other monitor downloading a bunch of dev tools for Linux). The mouse handling and graphics integration is at least equal and probably superior to VMWare. There were absolutely zero problems installing it. The one tiny bug I've encountered is that the KDE4 task bar cannot be auto-hidden at the bottom of the screen (the mouse will not unhide it there). The auto-resize feature (using XRANDR) is amazingly transparent. The VBox pseudo-graphics adapter is extremely fast.
Remember I am running a real installation of Linux on a physical disk - that disk can boot and run Linux natively from my BIOS - running it in the Vbox window is ridiculously trouble-free, spookily so, as one forgets he's dealing with a VM.
-drl
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Virtual blast from the past!
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45406
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Oh man, scare the bajeebers out of me! 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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deSitter
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 12/09/04
Posts: 2928
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Dadgummit, where's my OS/2 Warp CD??
If you're going to do DOS in VMs remember to install a HLT instruction TSR, and similar VXD in Windows. Otherwise your processor will melt through the system board..
-drl
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