There’s a facility with VirtualBox to install “Guest Additions” - various utilities for a particular OS that will enhance it’s capabilities to work with VirtualBox. Most of the other virtualisation software has its own equivalent.

However, I’ve struggled to get it work until I came across an article in PcPro (October 2007) about how to do just that. It’s for Ubuntu but works just as well for Kubuntu.

First of all mount the Guest Additions disk. Now run the following…

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux headers-`uname -r`

When that’s done you’re supposed to change to the CD rom and run the following…

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

For some reason I can’t get to the CD Rom via the terminal program (well I could, but it said there was nothing on it). Instead I found, by more luck than judgement, that I was able to install it at root via clicking on the CD Rom icon.

Anyway it worked. Amongst other things I can now resize my Kubuntu window up to the full 1280×1024 of my monitor. I’ve also got seamless mouse use - no more using a special key to move in and out of the virtual window, back to the host. All very handy.

Lastly, the same article gave details of a useful command line program provided with VirtualBox for making clones of your virtual hard drives. The command iis in the VirtualBox folder and is…

VBoxManage clonevdi {source disk} {output file}

The source disk is the full path to where you have the virtual drive stored.

Now that Kubuntu has been upgraded from Feisty Fawn to Gutsy Gibbon, it was time to re-install my copy on VirtulBox. Why re-install instead of simply upgrade? Well, I did try that but the update seemed to regularly crash. In the end I had an upgraded version of Kubuntu but it wouldn’t install and future updates. Which is obviously bad. So I decided to try afresh instead.

Now, the install is a breeze but, as before, I had 3 browsers to re-install. However, since my original instructions I’ve got it down to a more fine art. And, as before, Konqueror comes as standard with Kubuntu (hence me choosing the KDE interface).

So here are the rest…

Firefox
Go into Add/remove programs
Search for & install Firefox

Opera
Browse to http://www.opera.com/download/ and download the latest version to your desktop (it should be a .dev file)
Right click and select “Open With” followed by “Gdebi Package Installer”

SeaMonkey
This is the tougher one.
Download and install (as with Opera) the automated script.
Open up a command window and change to root
Now run the following command…

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p seamonkey

I posted recently about trying out Linux via VMWare. VMWare was incredibly easy to set-up but has had 2 frustrating problems…

1. It’s slow (this is apparently on purpose to get you to buy the commercial version. Allegedly)
2. The network bridging that it uses causes my network connection to not start for about 5 minutes after a reboot. Frustrating and nobody on the VMWare forums seems to want to suggest an answer to it.

The other free alternative is Virtual PC from Microsoft but, having tried it, it’s a typical Microsoft product that doesn’t seem to want to know anything about any possible rival. Hence you can set up various flavours of Windows OS’, but everything else is clumped into a big generic “other” pile.

PCPro has recommended VirtualBox so I gave that a go.

Again it was easy to use and, yes, quick. Again I installed Kubuntu, but every time I tried to change the resolution (from 1024×768 to my screens native 1280×1024) or specify the monitor or graphics card model, it refused to boot up.

I also had a frustrating time - my own fault for not reading instructions - with the Snapshot facility.

In the end I gave up with trying to change the graphics properties and just created a clean install of Kubuntu with Opera, Firefox and SeaMonkey browsers added to the existing Konqueror.

I uninstalled VMware and now can get an internet connection immediately my PC has booted. It’s also, as previously mentioned, quick. I’m limited to having it in a window on my Windows desktop in the aforementioned limited resolution, but I can live with that.

I should also take the chance to update my own instructions on updating the above browsers…

Firefox & SeaMonkey. These can be installed in one go using the automated script. For some reason I found I had files missing that caused this script to fail. I simply looked these files up in the Adept Manager.

Opera. Download from their site in .rpm file format, right click on the resultant file and select the option to install it.

And so I don’t have to keep going back to my original post to remember how to request root access - you put sudo at the beginning of the command line.

So there I was a couple of nights ago reading a PC magazine, when I came across a great article on how to use VMware. I’d heard of virtualisation but not dabbled. But it seems so easy I’d give it a go.

And you know what? It actually is easy!

My intention was to install Linux so I could run browsers for testing websites on. Of course that doesn’t cover them all - but I’ll probably need a Mac to collect the set!

I’d not used Linux before so this was an education in more than one.

Anyway, I installed Ubuntu at first as that appears to be the flavour of the month. That came with Firefox as standard. But what I was really after was Konqueror. After the briefest of investigations I found that this only comes with KDE environment - Kubuntu was therefore the better option (essentially it’s just Ubuntu with the KDE interface on it). I’ve since found that simply apt-get kde would have sorted it.

So, then I had Konqueror. The built in package manager knew about Firefox so I could install that simply from that.

Now I needed two more… Opera and SeaMonkey. Oh my.

Opera - I downloaded this from their site. It was in .deb format. Next I came across instructions which showed how to convert it into .rpm format. Once it’s in that you can simply click on the file and install it.

It was also during this that I found that the equivalent of root password (or super user password) in Ubuntu is to append sudo at the beginning of your command line.

SeaMonkey was tricky - the instructions on the site look a nightmare. Thankfully, I was pointed in the right direction - an automated script.

So now I have all 4 browsers installed that I needed. I kicked off the BMTG website and immediately found a problem. Linux does not come with the Arial font as standard - it would appear that this is Windows only. However, Helvetica is similar so I’ve added that into the Stylesheets as a “fall back” font. The site in the Linux browsers now looks better but the fonts aren’t quite the same in size… I suspect it’s not the font but rather the browsers. That’s something to look at in future.

What I did come across was various websites recommending Arial as a “web safe” font. That doesn’t make sense to me - Microsoft apparently allow you to use Arial elsewhere but not to distribute it. Hence why it’s not in Linux.

Now I have all my browsers, but I still need to get VMtools working.

So what do I think of Linux? Well, it’s not for the feint hearted - just getting software installed is a bit of a nightmare. I’m not quite sure how people think this is worthy of replacing Windows.

But VMware is definitely worth a punt - get that and, say, Ubuntu and have a play!