Win 7 in Ubuntu 10.10

Now I have it all XP to 7. But the Mac VM is proving to be difficult. I am also considering virtualizing Solaris and BeOS. Any other Operating Systems of note you can think of that I should try?

XP and Vista in VirtualBox on Ubuntu 10.10

Now, to get Win 7 and Mac OS X running in a VM on the same computer...

I'll Post the results.

Whats On My Computer? Part 1

People often ask me for advice on what software they should purchase for this or that purpose. I'm probably the wrong person to ask this question because I'm the working poor and as such, I don't go out and buy the 'latest and greatest (AS SEEN ON TV)' software. That does not mean that I do without.

Through the years I've tested, played with and reviewed many different types of software. I've come to the conclusion that free software often is not only a cheaper alternative but in many cases a better alternative to paid software. I'm not talking shareware here, but free software. Sometimes you have to pay to enable extra features but in a lot of cases the features that are offered are more than enough to do the task at hand.

Just so you know I practice what I preach lets talk about my computer. My laptop came pre-installed with Windows Vista. Now I'm not a total Windows hater here but you all know Vista left a bad taste in many of our mouths. So was the answer to upgrade to Windows 7? Not a chance. Windows 7 is Vista fixed basically, so for Microsoft to ask me to shell out another $200 dollars for what should have been a free patch irked me. So I dealt with Vista for a season and eventually decided to go the Linux route.

Linux has a lot going for it but there were still a few Windows programs I wanted to run so I decided on a dual boot. Dual booting allows me to either boot into Linux or Windows. So I have use of both operating systems. Now this is not the idea configuration as this takes up a great deal of hard drive space and you have to reboot the computer to get to either OS. Another option would be running Windows in a Virtual Machine inside of Linux. I decided on VirtualBox for this and started out by installing Windows XP for testing purposes.

Downloading and installing VirtualBox was a snap as it is in the Ubuntu software repositories. So you go to Applications, Ubuntu Software Centre and search for VirtualBox. Then you just click the install button. This is how Windows Add Remove Programs was originally envisioned by Microsoft but there has never been anything to add in Windows. Now they have Windows Live to download some free stuff for Windows 7. It pales in comparison. The Ubuntu Software Centre is amazing and new applications are added every day. Over 3000 titles and counting. You can find everything you need there.



The creation of a Virtual Machine in VirtualBox was easy and installing Windows XP went exactly like installing on a real computer. The next step I took was installing Microsoft Security Essentials because even though I'm running XP inside of Linux, the Windows OS is prone to viruses. I also updated XP to service pack 3. Now if Virtual XP system gets a bug it wont affect my Linux OS. Its like having XP in jail where it can still live and work but it can't harm anything but itself. VirtualBox allows you to take a snapshot of the system at anytime and you can always easily restore to that state.



As you can see from the screen I have a fully functional XP installation running in a window on my Linux box. I can use it to watch Netflix, since this is one application that requires Microsoft Siverlight to run. This s is the best of both worlds because I can launch my windows apps without rebooting my computer to log into Windows. Next step will be to obliterate my Vista partition and install Vista in a VM just like I did XP. I don't have the hard drive space in my Linux partition to do this at the moment.



Linux is the idea way to run Virtual Machines. I have run them under Windows before and the problem is that Windows is a big resource hog. So your VM gets stuck with whatever Windows has left over for RAM and CPU cycles. Usually not much. Under Linux my XP installation ran perfectly with only the 512 MB of RAM I allocated to it.

If you are interested in trying Linux, we would be happy to help you with the install. We will even set up a dual boot or install the Virtual Machine for you if you have the Windows installation disk.

Part two of this series will cover the programs that I run under Windows...

Newer is not always better. Not even in computers.

Windows 7 is good for fast, newer computers, however, what about your business computers? The economy has forced business to stretch the life of their old machines or to purchase lower-grade new computers. Linux is a perfect candidate. Linux offers software compatibility support where believe it or not some companies have not upgraded their software to be compatible with Windows 7! Windows 7 also takes a great deal more amount of memory and CPU speed. With Linux you can run your favorite Windows app in a virtual machine anyhow and not loose any of your favorite programs from XP.

As for the home user, there will most likely be a split. With the current environment a large population will only upgrade computers as they need to due to component failure. The technology has not advanced enough to warrant considering 5+ year old XP machines obsolete to the point of a necessary replacement. Home users are growing wary of being forced to upgrade both software and had ware at the whim of Microsoft.

This does leave the techno crowd and those who love to have the newest and best and have the disposable income to spend but this population has been smaller as of late. This is also the population where Linux and Mac tends to be competitors. Before you pay a dime for Windows 7, try a Linux desktop distribution. If you don’t like it, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? You spent no money other than for a burnable CD or DVD, a little time, and you just have to wipe your disk again before installing Windows 7.

Windows and Mac OS are like a toy car that you buy off the shelf and play with. Linux is like the same toy car made out of Lego You can play with it as it comes or you can remove and modify components (or the whole thing) and tailor it to your liking. To illustrate the point, Linux comes with many different choices of window managers, desktop environments, file managers, package managers (packages are what Linux calls programs), etc. The idea is to be able to tailor a distribution to exactly what you need and like.

There's nothing in Windows 7 that Linux can't do, and in most cases, do it better. Linux machines are quicker and more efficient. Linux desktops are more innovative and less static. Linux apps are more powerful, cheaper and less partisan, and Linux security has never been better. But best of all, we have complete control over the future of Linux, as opposed to allowing Microsoft to run roughshod over us in forcing the upgrade to Windows 7.

Don't forget that for any operating system, no matter how similar to to a commercial OS it might be, there is a learning curve involved. This is especially true of the software available and how to download it Generally software is downloaded from repositories using a package manager included with your distro. By and large you will not find commercial software in repositories, but will find thousands of free open source equivalents. Most of these are as powerful as the popular commercial ones, but require that you familiarize yourself with them. Take some time to do this and you'll be a really happy Linux user.

So, you think you may want to dip you toe into the Linux waters at this point? Ok, I have a couple of suggestions.

Try a Linux "live CD" first. Most Linux distributions have live (aka bootable) CDs that let you actually use the Linux OS of your choice directly from the CD. It will run slower, due to running from the CD drive, but it will give you a real feel for the Linux OS you may be contemplating. In addition, it will let you know, before you actually install it to your hard drive, whether or not it can support all your hardware. That way, you know beforehand exactly what to expect!

Even if you never get further than a Linux live CD, you will want to keep it around. Linux live CDs make extremely good disaster/recovery tools. One of my favorite uses is to clone my Windows XP partition. Just boot the live CD and clone one partition on one drive to an identical partition on another drive. A good bootable Linux CD like Knoppix should be in everyone's tool box, even if they're a die-hard Windows user.

Here's another last bit of advice. I recommend dual booting only one absolutely safe way: buy a second hard drive and install Linux on it. You can even use a USB thumb drive for this! This is also the easiest way to get into Linux. No tricky hard disk-partitioning to worry about. No way to mess up your current Windows install. Absolutely the easiest and safest way.

What New Windows?

After my last post a friend of mine told me I would be missing the boat by not upgrading to the latest incarnation of Windows and he pointed out that the cost of hardware is dropping every day and in fact I could get an entire media center PC for $1,200 with Windows 7 already on it.

To the first point I have to ask, what is it I will be missing out on in Windows 7 that my Linux distribution does not have? I find that these days I mainly use my computer for web applications and document creation. I also occasionally download music and edit graphics and pictures.

I was already using open source software for those applications. I have used Open Office for years now and for graphics I've grown rather fond of the GIMP. For email I use web based Yahoo and Gmail services. For music downloads I used Ares Galaxy but recently switched to Lime Wire. In fact, for about every basic function on the computer and some advanced ones I've been using some form of open source or free software.

My game playing has taken second stage in my life as the demands of working full time, raising a family and running a charity have taken front stage, so I'm I behind the times with that already and I'm better off for it. I still have my trusty PS2 and X box for those times when I just have to kill something.

So what killer feature does Windows 7 offer that will sway me to switch? When I asked this question I did some research on this and discovered I'm not missing much. One author said the best feature of Windows 7 was the ability to run Windows XP in a virtual machine. Now that's funny! The best feature of the new OS is it's ability to run the old OS. I can do that in Linux too as well as run Vista!

OK, so what else is new in 7? Here's a list of features compiled from Microsoft's Windows 7 site:

• "Jump Lists—new in Windows 7—take you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar." (Looks a lot like favorites. Had that in Linux already and the ability to pin to the taskbar.)

• "Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to re size open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen." (This is a revolutionary feature? See Taskbar section below.)

• "Windows Live Essentials. Simply put, it's free software that makes a PC running Windows 7 do more great things. Things like e-mail, instant messaging, photo editing, and blogging." (They took out all of the Microsoft crap-ware from the OS and now you can download them form Windows Live. Do yourself a favor and download open source alternatives that work instead. Compared to the Linux software repository Microsoft's Live offerings look pathetic.)

• "Windows Taskbar. Sure, the new Windows 7 taskbar is still the same familiar place for switching between windows. But now it's easier to see, more flexible, and more powerful." (Have you ever heard of KDE? It was a truly unique attempt to rethinking the taskbar. If you want to see a cool way to organize your windows nothing beats Linux multiple desktops. You can even view them in a desktop cube that you can scroll though with your mouse wheel.)

• "New desktop themes." (in Linux you can install an entirely different desktop, not just a theme), "some new wallpapers, and some new gadgets ala improved windows sidebar." (Excuse me, but enhancing something does not make it a 'new' feature. In Linux gadgets have been a mainstay for quite a while now in the form of plasmoids.)

• There is also improved touch screen support. (That would be nice but wont help me any unless I dole out the money for a touch screen PC. Besides that, Linux has had touch screen capabilities since the 1994 Compaq Concerto.)
  

• Microsoft also did some nice graphics enhancements to the whole OS. (The desktop looks nice. Linux falls short in this area, but with major updates coming every month they are not far behind. Windrows 7 still cant hold a candle to a Mac in this area. To me the new 7 desktop seems strangely reminiscent of PC-Linux.)

• They slimmed down 7 so its system requirements are slightly less than Vistas. (This was because of all the netbooks that came out that were running Linux out of necessity. Microsoft had even extended the life of XP to keep windows pre-installed on these new computers! Come on guys, with Linux you can get your entire OS on a bootable CD. Or on a thumb drive you can carry with you to any computer. That is a slim OS!)

• There are a lot of other minor tweaks, fixes, etc.all things that more or less should have been fixed in Vista before it was released. (Nothing being touted here convinces me Microsoft should have discontinued Vista or even XP for that matter. If this was a car salesman selling us a new car to replace the old broken car he sold us to replace the previous broken car he sold us we'd figure out we had been ripped off a long time ago.We would just want him to fix the darn car!)

I'm not saying Microsoft software is all bad. My main argument here is that these features are nothing new and should have been fixed in a Vista patch. The whole Kernel of 7 is built on the Vista Kernel so its not a stretch for them to fix what was already there. It is their code and it can't possibly be so inflexible that even Microsoft could not have fixed it . Linux has bugs sometimes too. But with Linux as I pointed out I'm going to get a fix and not a whole new OS. With Linux I'm not going to be paying for that fix either.

That brings me to my friends second point. Tech prices will always drop and $1,200 for that uber-system seems like a steal compared to what it once was priced. I don't even have $500.00 to plunk into a computer, and a lot of families are in the same boat. Why would I pay for something I already have? My existing hardware can do all the same things better and faster with Linux.

For those of you who want to spend that kind of money chasing Microsoft's tail around, more power too you. I look forward to the donation of your old computers and if that kind of cash is easy to come by, I know I can count on you to donate some money to our cause so we can provide even better computers to families in our community who don't have one. Because we are using Linux and open source software that kind of money will go a long way!

Check out the following video to see some Linux eye candy in action!

http://computersforcharity.webs.com

For more comparisons here is a great in depth article: http://www.tuxradar.com/content/linux-vs-windows-7?page=1

Upgrade and Dispose or Reduce and Reuse?

Microsoft has come out with another new OS, Windows 7. Since Vista turned out to be about as popular as Windows ME was, the software giant has followed the same path with Windows 7 as it did going from ME to XP. Windows 7 isn't really much more than a fixed version of Vista with some of the annoyances missing and new ones included.

One thing is for certain, the XP operating system that most people prefer is dead in the water and you can't even upgrade from XP to 7. I was a fan of XP from the beginning but then I had more disposable income to upgrade my system to meet XPs requirements. In today's economy though I am not in the same position I was then.

Also since then my values have changed. I was oblivious in the past to the environmental impact that all these hardware upgrades were causing worldwide in the form of e-waste. The carcasses and entrails of our old equipment polluted our landfills first, and then as local regulations tightened, were shipped to third world countries and dumped on the poorest of the poor.

Microsoft illustrates that neither it nor the big computer manufactures have changed their attitudes much in regards to their core business principals. Sure there are new initiatives announced every day by them but their hearts are still only on the bottom line. Keeping us enslaved to the Upgrade and Dispose mentality that lines their pockets is truly the only green initiative that they believe in.

Form what they are saying the minimum system requirements to run Windows 7 will be more modest that Vista. That is great news for computer refurbishers who have to work with the older hardware from peoples previous Windows upgrades right? Lets look at the facts. At minimum you will need:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

• 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

• DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

The requirements recommended by Microsoft are insufficient; these are minimums, which means your experience will be minimal. If you load Windows 7 on a PC that does not have enough processing power, operating memory, hard drive space and the right combination of video and sound cards Windows 7 will work, but at a much lower capability than its optimum performance.

These are fairly high end requirements for those of us who shelled out the money for a new PC less than 5 years ago. I just got my desktop upgraded to 512 MB of RAM to run XP comfortably.

Then there is the cost of the OS, Were talking $200.00 for the Starter Edition. Add to that the cost of licensing Microsoft Office. Also add an anti virus program license annually, to protect your Windows system form the inevitable malware that it will be infected with if you don't. Theses are all considerable costs in addition to whatever hardware you have to invest in to do things the 'Microsoft Way'.

I'm writing this post from my laptop which used to have Windows Vista on it. Even with a Pentium Dual-Core processor and 1 Gb of RAM it was running like a limp turtle when running more than three applications and Vista. Now its running Mac Pup (a lightweight Linux distro). I'm currently only using 200 MB of memory and I have applications running in two other desktops. The entire OS is running in RAM so it is FAST.

Even the requirements for running a typical full fledged version of Linux are not prohibitive:

• Processor: Intel—Pentium 1-4 or Xeon; AMD—Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon MP, Athlon 64, Sempron or Opteron

• Memory: 256 MB

• Hard disk: 500 MB for minimal system; 3 GB recommended for standard system

• Sound and graphics cards: Supports most modern sound and graphics cards

At Computers for Charity we advocate the use of Open Source software as an alternative to the commercial bloatware that will be discontinued in a few years and force you to upgrade your whole system. We may not be able to provide you with a system capable of running the latest Microsoft OS, but why would we want to?

For more information Please go to: http://computersforcharity.webs.com