More VirtualBox experimentation

One commenter to my big post about VirtualBox the other day - an old mate from CIX, syllopsium - said that he found VBox's support for OSs other than Windows or Linux to be pretty poor.

So, I thought I'd try the only couple of ISOs I have of OSs that don't belong to either of those families: OpenSolaris (0609 build) and PC-BSD 7.1 (a distro of FreeBSD 7). Interesting both BSD & Solaris are on VBox's list of supported VM types, so I guess they ought to work. Certainly both booted happily from their ISO files, straight into functioning GUIs. OpenSolaris is a live desktop, so I was even able to get Web access from it.

I'm particularly amused by OpenSolaris. It took 2min to boot. On my old PC - an AthlonXP 2800+ with 2G of RAM, so old but not an antique - the same copy of OpenSolaris, burned to a CD, took about 20-25min to boot, and when it did, I had no working Ethernet ports so no working Internet access either. It's a great deal faster in a VM on this machine than on bare metal on the old ones. OK, so, access to a cached ISO file is quicker than a physical optical disk, but not that much faster on the other OSs I have tried. Linux Mint didn't install hugely quicker than on a physical machine - I doubt it was as little as half the time, more like ²/₃ of the time.

I must try both of these on the native hardware soon.

I'm discovering some limitations to the XP support, though. It is as one person in CIX:linux (slightly scornfully) described it: "a transparent-desktop job". XP windows do not intermingle with Linux windows; all XP windows form a single layer on the Linux desktop. Either they're all on top or none of them are. Also, in seamless mode, I can't move XP windows off the primary monitor onto my secondary screen - the seamless window is auto-sized to my primary monitor and that's all you get.

Neither of these is killer problems. One that is more awkward is that because GNOME sees the XP VM as a single task, although I have a Spotify window on my Linux desktop, I can't alt-tab to it or select it from the GNOME window selector (when that is actually working, which on a vertical panel is fairly seldom). I think that both VMware Fusion and Parallels on the Mac have solved this.

I still think it's pretty damn fantastic, all the same, mind...

Ubuntu 9.10 FTW

In unrelated news, I had to bring up my main fileserver to retrieve the OpenSolaris & PC-BSD ISOs. Alas, its evaluation copy of Windows 2003 SBS has expired, but I get 1h to pull files off it each reboot, apparently.

I am considering trying to install Windows 2008 Server over the top. I don't care about saving my settings, I just don't want to have to backup & completely reformat. Alas, I seem to have lost my ISO of that.

Going looking, I found that W2k8 R2 is out & it is Micros~1's first ever 64-bit onlyOS. I'd missed this one. It's the server version of Windows 7, basically.

And I had no idea if the fairly-late-model Pentium 4 in my HP Proliant was a 64-bit capable one or not. I know it has hyperthreading, but not if it sports 64-bit extensions.

It doesn't have a mouse of its own and I couldn't get Ubuntu's rdesktop client to connect so I could run CPUID on it, so I tried logging in - only to be told that my time was up and be spanked with a BSOD. Thanks, Redmond.

An idea occurred. I could try booting my 64-bit Ubuntu CD. If it worked, it's 64-bit capable; if it doesn't, it's not.

Well, it's not, and Ubuntu helpfully printed a little message to tell me that I needed an x86-64 CPU and it could only find an x86-32 one. No worries; I am limited to original W2K8 Server then. I am sure I'll cope.

On a whim, I tried my copy of 32-bit Ubuntu 9.10, and to my considerable surprise, not only did it boot but it found the RAID controller and happily mounted my NTFS volume. I tried all manner of Linux distros on this last year - Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04, CentOS and SME Server - and none of them could see the RAID5 volume on its Dell-badged ALI MegaRAID card. So at some point late last year, they fixed the driver in the kernel.

Which was nice.

Which leaves me wondering... try to upgrade it to a newer Windows Server, in which I could do with more experience, or stick Ubuntu on it, which will probably be quicker and easier and more use, and won't date-expire on my in 6mths...?