Technology Tales

Installing FreeBSD in a VirtualBox Virtual Machine

2^nd March 2014

With UNIX being the basis of Linux, I have a soft spot for trying out any UNIX that can be installed on a PC. For a while, I had OpenSolaris on the go and even vaguely recall having a look at one of the BSD's. However, any recent attempt to install one of the latter, and there are quite a few around now, got stymied by some sort of kernel panic caused by using AMD CPU's. With the return to the Intel fold arising from the upgrade of my main home PC last year, it perhaps was time to try again.

The recent release of FreeBSD 10.0 was the cue and I downloaded a DVD image for a test installation in a VirtualBox virtual machine with 4 GB of memory and a 32 GB virtual hard drive attached (expanding storage was chosen so not all the allocated space has been taken so far). The variant of FreeBSD chosen was the 64-bit x86 one, and I set to installing it in there. Though not as pretty in appearance as those in various Linux distros, the installer was not that user unfriendly to me. Mind you, I have experience of installing Arch Linux, which might have acclimatised me somewhat.

Those installation screens ask about the keyboard mapping that you want, and I successfully chose one of the UK options. There was limited opportunity for adding extras, though there was a short list of a few from which I made some selections. Given that user account set up also was on offer, I would have been better off knowing what groups to assign for my personal user account to have to avoid needing to log in as root so often following system start up later. Otherwise, all the default options were sufficient.

When the installation process was complete, it was time to boot into the new system and all that was on offer was a command line log in session. After logging in as root, it was time to press pkg into service to get a desktop environment in place. The first step was to install X:

pkg install xorg

Then, it was time to install a desktop environment. While using XFCE or KDE were alternatives, I chose GNOME 2 due to familiarity and more extensive instructions on the corresponding FreeBSD handbook page. Issuing the following command added GNOME and all its helper applications:

pkg install gnome2

So that GNOME starts up at the next reboot, some extra steps are needed. The first of these is to add the following line into /etc/fstab:

proc /proc procfs rw 0 0

Then, two lines were needed in /etc/rc.conf:

gdm_enable="YES"
gnome_enable="YES"

The first enables the GNOME display manager, while the second activates other GNOME programs that are needed for a desktop session to start. With each of these in place, I got a graphical login screen at the next boot time.

With FreeBSD being a VirtualBox Guest, it was time to consult the relevant FreeBSD manual page. Here, there are sections for a number of virtual machine tools, so a search was needed to find the one for VirtualBox. VirtualBox support for FreeBSD is incomplete in that there is no installation media for BSD systems, while Linux and Solaris are supported along with Windows. Therefore, it is over to the FreeBSD repositories for the required software:

pkg install virtualbox-ose-additions

Aside from the virtual machine session not capturing and releasing the mouse pointer automatically, that did everything that was needed, even if it was the open source edition of the drivers and their proprietary equivalents. To resolve the mouse pointer issue, I needed to temporarily disable the GNOME desktop session in /etc/rc.conf to drop to a console only session where xorg.conf could be generated using the following commands:

Xorg -configure
cp xorg.conf.new /etc/xorg.conf

In the new xorg.conf file, the mouse section needs to be as follows:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Mouse0"
Driver      "vboxmouse"
EndSection

If it doesn't look like the above, and it wasn't the case for me, then it needs changing. Also, any extra lines from the default set up also need removing, or the mouse will not function as it should. The ALT+F1 (for accessing GNOME menus) and ALT+F2 (for running commands) keyboard shortcuts then become crucial when your mouse is not working as it should and could avert a panic too; knowing that adjusting a single configuration file will resolve a problem when doing so is less accessible is not a good feeling as I discovered to my own cost. The graphics settings were fine by default, but here's what you should have in case it isn't for you:

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
Identifier  "Card0"
Driver      "vboxvideo"
VendorName  "InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH"
BoardName   "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter"
BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

The next step is to ensure that your HAL settings are as they should. I needed to create a file in /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy called 90-vboxguest.fdi that contains the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
# Sun VirtualBox
# Hal driver description for the vboxmouse driver
# $Id: chapter.xml,v 1.33 2012-03-17 04:53:52 eadler Exp $
Copyright (C) 2008-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
This file is part of VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE, as
available from http://www.virtualbox.org. This file is free software;
you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software
Foundation, in version 2 as it comes in the "COPYING" file of the
VirtualBox OSE distribution. VirtualBox OSE is distributed in the
hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY of any kind.
Please contact Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa
Clara, CA 95054 USA or visit http://www.sun.com if you need
additional information or have any questions.
-->
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.subsystem" string="pci">
<match key="info.product" string="VirtualBox guest Service">
<append key="info.capabilities" type="strlist">input</append>
<append key="info.capabilities" type="strlist">input.mouse</append>
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">vboxmouse</merge>
<merge key="input.device" type="string">/dev/vboxguest</merge>
</match>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

With all that set, it is time to ensure that the custom user account is added to the wheel and operator groups using this command:

pw user mod [user name] -G wheel operator

Executing the above as root means that the custom account can run the su command so that logging in as root at the start of a desktop session no longer is needed. That is what being in the wheel group allows, so anyone in the operator group can shut down or restart the system. Since both are facilities readily available on Linux, so I fancied having them in FreeBSD too.

Being able to switch to root in a terminal session meant that I could go on to add software like Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, EMACS, Geany, NetBeans, Banshee and so on. Though there may be a line of opinion that FreeBSD is a server operating system, all of these make it more than passable for serving as a desktop one too. There may be no package management GUI as such and the ones that come with GNOME do not work either, yet anyone familiar with command line working will get around that.

While FreeBSD may be conservative, that has its place too, and being able to build up a system one item at a time teaches far more than getting everything already sorted in one hit. So far, there is enough documentation to get me going, leaving me to see where else things go too. So far, the OS hasn't been that intimidating, which is good to see.

Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8 within a VMWare Virtual Machine

1^st November 2012

Though my main home PC runs Linux Mint, I do like to have the facility to use Windows software occasionally, and virtualisation has allowed me to continue doing that. For a good while, it was a Windows 7 guest within a VirtualBox virtual machine and, before that, one running Windows XP fulfilled the same role. However, it did feel as if things were running slower in VirtualBox than once might have been the case, so I jumped ship to VMware Player. While it may be proprietary and closed source, it is free of charge and has been doing what was needed. A subsequent recent upgrade of a video driver on the host operating system allowed the enabling of a better graphical environment in the Windows 7 guest.

Instability

However, there were issues with stability and I lost the ability to flit from the VM window to the Linux desktop at will, with the system freezing on me and needing a reboot. Working in Windows 7 using full-screen mode avoided this, yet it did feel as I was constrained to working on a Windows-only machine whenever I did so. The graphics performance was imperfect too, with screening refreshing being very blocky with some momentary scrambling whenever I opened the Start menu. Others would not have been as patient with that as I was, though there was the matter of an expensive Photoshop licence to be guarded too.

In hindsight, a bit of pruning could have helped. An example would have been driver housekeeping in the form of removing VirtualBox Guest Additions because they could have been conflicting with their VMware counterparts. For some reason, those thoughts entered my mind to make me consider another, more expensive option instead.

Considering NAS & Windows/Linux Networking

That would have taken the form of setting aside a PC for running Windows 7 and having a NAS for sharing files between it and my Linux system. In fact, I did get to exploring what a four bay QNAP TS-412 would offer me and realised that you cannot put normal desktop hard drives into devices like that. For a while, it looked as if it would be a matter of getting drives bundled with the device or acquiring enterprise grade disks to main the required continuity of operation. The final edition of PC Plus highlighted another one, though: the Western Digital Red Pro range. These are part way been desktop and enterprise classifications and have been developed in association with NAS makers too.

While looking at the NAS option certainly became an education, it has exited any sort of wish list that I have. After all, it is the cost of such a setup that gets me asking if I really need such a thing. While the purchase of a Netgear FS 605 Ethernet switch would have helped incorporate it, there has been no trouble sorting alternative uses for that device since it bumps up the number of networked devices that I can have, never a bad capability to have. As I was to find, there was a less expensive alternative that would become sufficient for my needs.

In-situ Windows 8 Upgrade

Microsoft has been making available evaluation copies of Windows 8 Enterprise that last for 90 days before expiring. One is in my hands has been running faultlessly in a VMware virtual machine for the past few weeks. That made me wonder if upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8 help with my main Windows VM problems. Being a curious risk-taking type I decided to answer the question for myself using the £24.99 Windows Pro upgrade offer that Microsoft have been running for those not needing a disk up front; they need to pay £49.99 while you can get one afterwards for an extra £12.99 and £3.49 postage if you wish, a slightly cheaper option. Though there also was a time cost in that it occupied a lot of a weekend for me, it seems to have done what was needed, so it was worth the outlay.

Given the element of risk, Photoshop was deactivated to be on the safe side. That wasn't the only pre-upgrade action that was needed because the Windows 8 Pro 32-bit upgrade needs at least 16 GB before it will proceed. Of course, there was the matter of downloading the installer from the Microsoft website too. This took care of system evaluation and paying for the software, as well as the actual upgrade itself.

The installation took a few hours, with virtual machine reboots along the way. Naturally, the licence key was needed too, as well as the selection of a few options, though there weren't many of these. Being able to carry over settings from the pre-existing Windows 7 instance certainly helped with this and with making the process smoother too. No software needed reinstatement, and it doesn't feel as if the system has forgotten very much at all, a successful outcome.

Post-upgrade Actions

Just because I had a working Windows 8 instance didn't mean that there wasn't more to be done. In fact, it was the post-upgrade sorting that took up more time than the actual installation. For one thing, my digital mapping software wouldn't work without .Net Framework 3.5 and turning on the operating system feature from the Control Panel fell over at the point where it was being downloaded from the Microsoft Update website. Even removing Avira Internet Security after updating it to the latest version had no effect, and that was a finding during the Windows 8 system evaluation process. The solution was to mount the Windows 8 Enterprise ISO installation image that I had and issue the following command from a command prompt running with administrative privileges:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:d:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess

For sake of assurance regarding compatibility, Avira has been replaced with Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security. The Avira licence won't go to waste, since I have another home in mind for it. Removing Avira without crashing Windows 8 proved impossible, though, and necessitating booting Windows 8 into Safe Mode. Because of much faster startup times, that cannot be achieved with a key press at the appropriate moment because the time window is too short now. One solution is to set the Safe Boot tick box in the Boot tab of MSCONFIG (or System Configuration, as it otherwise calls itself) before the machine is restarted. While there may be others, this was the one that I used. With Avira removed, clearing the same setting and rebooting restored normal service.

Dealing with a Dual Personality

One observer has stated that Windows 8 gives you two operating systems for the price of one: the one on the Start screen and the one on the desktop. Having got to wanting to work with one at a time, I decided to make some adjustments. Adding Classic Shell got me back a Start menu, and I omitted the Windows Explorer (or File Explorer as it is known in Windows 8) and Internet Explorer components. Though Classic Shell will present a desktop like what we have been getting from Windows 7 by sweeping the Start screen out of the way for you, I found that this wasn't quick enough for my liking, so I added Skip Metro Suite to speed up things. Though the tool does more than sweeping the Start screen out of the way, I have switched off these functions. Classic Shell has been configured too, so the Start screen can be accessed with a press of the Windows key. It has updated too so that boot into the desktop should be faster now. As for me, I'll leave things as they are for now. Even the possibility of using Windows' own functionality to go directly to the traditional desktop will be left untested while things are left to settle. Tinkering can need a break.

Outcome

After all that effort, I now have a seemingly more stable Windows virtual machine running Windows 8. Flitting between it and other Linux desktop applications has not caused a system freeze so far, and that was the result that I wanted. There now is no need to consider having separate Windows and Linux PC's with a NAS for sharing files between them, so that option is well off my wish-list. There are better uses for my money.

Not everyone has had my experience, though, because I saw a report that one user failed to update a physical machine to Windows 8 and installed Ubuntu instead; they were a Linux user anyway, even if they used Fedora more than Ubuntu. It is possible to roll back from Windows 8 to the previous version of Windows because there is a windows.old directory left primarily for that purpose. However, that may not help you if you have a partially operating system that doesn't allow you to do just that. In time, I'll remove it using the Disk Clean-up utility by asking it to remove previous Windows installations or running File Explorer with administrator privileges. Somehow, the former approach sounds the safer.

What About Installing Afresh?

While there was a time when I went solely for upgrades when moving from one version of Windows to the next, the annoyance of the process got to me. If I had known that installing the upgrade twice onto a computer with a clean disk would suffice, it would have saved me a lot. Staring from Windows 95 (from the days when you got a full installation disk with a PC and not the rescue media that we get now) and moving through a sequence of successors not only was time-consuming, but it also revealed the limitations of the first in the series when it came to supporting more recent hardware. It was enough to have me buying the full retailed editions of Windows XP and Windows 7 when they were released; the latter got downloaded directly from Microsoft. While these were retail versions that you could move from one computer to another, Windows 8 will not be like that. In fact, you will need to get its System Builder edition from a reseller and that can only be used on one machine. It is the merging of the former retail and OEM product offerings.

What I have been reading is that the market for full retail versions of Windows was not a big one anyway. However, it was how I used to work as you have read above, and it does give you a fresh system. Most probably get Windows with a new PC and don't go building them from scratch like I have done for more than a decade. Maybe the System Builder version would apply to me anyway, and it appears to be intended for virtual machine use as well as on physical ones. More care will be needed with those licences by the looks of things, and I wonder what needs not to be changed so as not to invalidate a licence. After all, making a mistake might cost between £75 and £120 depending on the edition.

Final Thoughts

So far, Windows 8 is treating me well, and I have managed to bend it to my will too, always a good thing to be able to say. In time, it might be that a System Builder copy could need buying yet, but I'll leave well alone for now. Though I needed new security software, the upgrade still saved me money over a hardware solution to my home computing needs and I have a backup disk on order from Microsoft too. That I have had to spend some time settling things was a means of learning new things for me but others may not be so patient and, with Windows 7 working well enough for most, you have to ask if it's only curious folk like me who are taking the plunge. Still, the dramatic change has re-energised the PC world in an era when smartphones and tablets have made so much of the running recently. That too is no bad thing because an unchanging technology is one that dies and there are times when significant changes are needed, as much as they upset some folk. For Microsoft, this looks like one of them, and it'll be interesting to see where things go from here for PC technology.

Uninstalling VirtualBox Guest Additions on a Linux Guest OS

8^th April 2012

Within the last few days, I updated my Linux Mint Debian Edition virtual machine installation to Update 4. Between not following the instructions so closely and problems with the update server, a re-installation preceded the update itself. When all was done, no desktop environment appeared, and issuing the startx command revealed that it was one of the VirtualBox drivers that was the cause of the problem. With my being unable to see any files on the VirtualBox virtual CD, something else needed doing and the executing following command (replacing [VboxAddonsFolder] with VBoxGuestAdditions-4.1.12 in my case, but it is different for each VirtualBox version) resolved the situation:

/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh

When it was complete, a scrambled desktop began to appear, so a reboot was to set things to rights. Then, I could set to looking at what Update 4 had brought to Linux Mint Debian Edition.

How mobile device interfaces are Influencing desktop computing environment designs

19^th September 2011

Could 2011 be remembered as the year when the desktop computing interface got a major overhaul? One part of this, Windows 8, won't be with us until next year, but there has been enough happening so far this year that has resulted in a lot of comment. With many if not all the changes, it is possible to detect the influence of interfaces used on smartphones. After all, the carry-over from Windows Phone 7 to the new Metro interface is unmistakeable.

Two developments in the Linux world have spawned a hell of an amount of comment: Canonical's decision to develop Unity for Ubuntu and the arrival of GNOME 3. While there have been many complaints about the changes made in both, there must be a fair few folk who are just getting on with using them without complaint. Maybe there are many who even quietly like the new interfaces. While I am not so sure about Unity, I surprised myself by taking to GNOME Shell so much that I installed it on Linux Mint. It remains a work in progress, as does Unity, but it'll be very interesting to see it mature. Perhaps a good number of the growing collection of GNOME Shell plugins could make it into the main codebase. If that were to happen, I could see it being welcomed by a good few folk.

There was little doubt that the changes in GNOME 3 looked daunting, so Ubuntu's taking a different approach is understandable until you come to realise how change that involves anyway. With GNOME 3 working so well for me, I feel disinclined to dally very much with Unity at all. In fact, I am writing these words on a Toshiba laptop running UGR, effectively Ubuntu running GNOME 3, and that could become my main home computing operating system in time.

For those who find these changes not to their taste, there are alternatives. Some Linux distributions are sticking with GNOME 2 as long as they can, and there apparently has been some mention of a fork to keep a GNOME 2 interface available indefinitely. However, there are other possibilities such as LXDE and XFCE out there too. In fact, until GNOME 3 won me over, LXDE was coming to mind as a place of safety until I learned that Linux Mint was retaining its desktop identity. As always, there's KDE too, but I have never warmed to that for some reason.

The latest version of OS X, Lion, also included some changes inspired by iOS, the operating system that powers both the iPhone and iPad. However, while the current edition of PC Pro highlights some disgruntlement in professional circles regarding Apple's direction, this does not seem to have aroused the kind of ire that has been abroad in the world of Linux. Is it because Linux users want to feel that they are in charge and that iMac and MacBook users are content to have decisions made for them so long as everything just works? Speaking for myself, the former description seems to fit me, though having choices means that I can reject decisions that I do not like so much.

At the time of writing, the release of a developer preview of the next version of Windows has been generating a lot of attention. It also appears that changes are headed for Windows users too. However, I get the sense that a more conservative interface option will be retained and that could be essential for avoiding the alienation of corporate users. After all, I cannot see the Metro interface gaining much favour in the working environment when so many of us have so much to do. Nevertheless, I plan to get my hands on the developer preview to have a look (the weekend proved too short for this). It will be very interesting to see how the next version of Windows develops, and I plan to keep an eye on it as it does so.

It now looks as if many will have their work cut out if they are to avoid where desktop computing interfaces are going. Established paradigms are being questioned, particularly as a result of touch interfaces on smartphones and tablets. Wii and Kinect have involved other ways of interacting with computers, too, so there's a lot of mileage in rethinking how we work with computers. So far, I have been able to deal with the changes in the world of Linux, but I am left wondering about the changes that Microsoft is making. After Vista, they need to be careful and they know that. Maybe, they'll be better at getting users through changes in computing interfaces than others, but it'll be very interesting to see what happens. Unlike open-source community projects, they have the survival of a massive multinational at stake.

Getting Fedora working in VirtualBox

12^th May 2009

After a hiatus induced by disk errors seen on start up, I have gone having a go with Fedora again. In the world of real PC's, its place has been taken by Debian, so virtualisation was brought into play for my most recent explorations. I could have gone with 10, the current stable version, but curiosity got the better of me and I downloaded a pre-release version of 11 instead.

On my way to getting that instated, I encountered two issues. The first of these was boot failure with the message like this:

FATAL: INT18: BOOT FAILURE

As it turned out, that was easily sorted. I was performing the installation from a DVD image mounted as if it were a real DVD, and laziness or some other similar reason had me rebooting with it still mounted. Though there is an option to load the hard disk variant, it wasn't happening, resulting in the message that's above. A complete shutdown and replacement of the virtual DVD with a real one set matters to rights.

The next trick was to get Guest Additions added, but Fedora's 2.6.29 was not what VirtualBox was expecting, and it demanded the same ransom as Debian: gcc, make and kernel header files. Unfamiliarity had me firing up Fedora's software installation software, only to find that Synaptic seems to beat it hands down in the search department. Turning to Google dredged up the following command to be executed, which got me further:

yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel

However, the installed kernel headers didn't match the kernel, but a reboot fixed that once the kernel was updated. Then, the Guest Additions installed themselves as intended, with necessary compilations to match the installed kernel.

The procedures that I have described here would, it seems, work for Fedora 10; well, they certainly have bequeathed me a working system. I have had a little poke and a beta of Firefox 3.5 is included, and I saw sign of OpenOffice 3.1 too. So, it looks very cutting edge, easily so in comparison with Ubuntu and Debian. Apart from one or niggles, it seems to run smoothly too. Firstly, don't use the command shutdown -h now to close the thing down, or you'll cause VirtualBox to choke. Using the usual means ensures that all goes well, though. The other irritation is that it doesn't connect to the network without a poke from me. Whether SELinux is to blame for this or not, I cannot tell, but it might be something for consideration by the powers than be. That these are the sorts of things that I have noticed should be telling you that I have no major cause for complaint. While I have mulled over a move to Fedora in the past and that option remains as strong as ever, Ubuntu is not forcing me to look at an alternative and the fact that I know how to achieve what I need is resulting in inertia anyway.

Some things that I'd miss on moving from Linux to Windows

17^th January 2009

The latest buzz surrounding Windows 7 has caused one observer to suggest that it's about to blast Linux from the desktop. While my experiences might be positive, there are still things that I like about Linux that make me reluctant to consider switching back. Here are a few in no particular order:

Virtual Desktops (or Workspaces)

I find these very handy for keeping things organised when I have a few applications open at the same time. While I think that someone has come with a way of adding the same functionality to Windows, I'd need to go looking for that. Having everything cluttering up a single taskbar would feel a bit limiting.

Symbolic Links

If you have not come across these before, they are a little difficult to explain, but it's great to have the ability to make the contents of a folder appear in more than one place at a time without filling up your hard drive. While it's true to say that Windows 7 gets Libraries, I have a soft spot for the way that Linux does it so simply.

Lack of (intrusive) fidgeting

One of Windows' biggest problems is that it's such a massive target for attacks by the less desirable elements of the web community. The result is a multitude of security software vendors wanting to get their wares onto your PC; it's when they get there that all the fidgeting starts. The cause is the constant need for system monitoring that eats up resources that could be used for other things. Though I know some packages are less intrusive than others, I do like the idea of feeling as if I am in full control of my PC rather someone else taking decisions for me (unavoidable in the world of work, I know). An example of this is Norton's not allowing me to shut it down when it goes rogue, even when acting as Administrator. While I can see the reason for this in that it's trying to hamper the attentions of nefarious malware, it ends up making me feel less than empowered and I also like to feel trusted too. Another thing that I like is the idea of something awaiting my input rather than going away and trying to guess what I need and getting it wrong, an experience that seems typical of Microsoft software.

Command Line

Though this is less of a miss than it used to be, there is now a learning curve with PowerShell's inclusion with Windows 7, and it's not something that I want to foist on myself without my having the time to learn its ins and outs. Though it's not a bad skill to have listed on the proverbial CV, I now know my way around bash and its ilk while knowing where to look when I intend to take things further.

After these, there are other personal reasons for my sticking with Linux, like memories of bad experiences with Windows XP and the way that Linux just seems to get on with the job. Its being free of charge is another bonus, and the freedom to have things as you want makes you feel that you have a safer haven in this ever-changing digital world. While I am not sure if I'd acquire the final version of Windows 7, I am certain that it will not be replacing Linux as my main home computing platform, something that should come as no surprise given what I have said above.

Running Windows 7 within VirtualBox

12^th January 2009

With all the fanfare that surrounded the public beta release of Windows 7, I suppose that the opportunity to give it a whirl was too good to miss. Admittedly, Microsoft bodged the roll-out by underestimating the level of interest and corralling everyone into a 24-hour time slot, with one exacerbating the other. In the event, they did eventually get their act together and even removed the 2.5 million licence limit. Thus, I suppose that they really needed to get 7 right after the unloved offering that was Vista, so they probably worked out that the more testers that they get, the better. After, it might be observed that the cynical view that the era of making people pay to "test" your products might be behind us and that users just want things to work well if not entirely faultlessly these days.

After several abortive raids, I eventually managed to snag myself a licence and started downloading the behemoth using the supplied download manager. I foresaw it taking a long time and so stuck with the 32-bit variant so as not to leave open the possibility of that part of the process using up any more of my time. As it happened, the download did take quite a few hours to complete, but this part of the process was without any incident or fuss.

Once the DVD image was downloaded, it was onto the familiar process of building myself a VirtualBox VM as a sandbox to explore the forthcoming incarnation of Windows. After setting up the ISO file as a virtual DVD, installation itself was an uneventful process, yet subsequent activities weren't without their blemishes. The biggest hurdle to be overcome was to get the virtual network adapter set up and recognised by Windows 7. The trick is to update the driver using the VirtualBox virtual CD as the source because Windows 7 will not recognise it using its own driver repository. Installing the other VirtualBox tools is a matter of going to Compatibility page in the Properties for the relevant executable, the one with x86 in the file name in my case, and setting XP as the Windows version (though Vista apparently works just as well, I played safe and depended on my own experience). While I was at it, I allowed the file to run under the administrator account, too. Right-clicking on executable files will bring you to the compatibility troubleshooter that achieves much the same ends but by a different route. With the Tools installed, all was workable rather than completely satisfactory. Shared folders have not worked for, but that might need a new version of the VirtualBox software or getting to know any changes to networking that come with Windows 7. I plan to stick with using USB drives for file transfer for the moment. Though stretching the screen to fit the VirtualBox window was another thing that would not happen, that's a much more minor irritation.

With those matters out of the way, I added security software from the list offered by Windows with AVG, Norton and Kaspersky being the options on offer. I initially chose the last of these but changed my mind after seeing the screen becoming so corrupted as to make it unusable. That set me to rebuilding the VM and choosing Norton 360 after the second Windows installation had finished. That is working much better, and I plan to continue my tinkering beyond this. I have noticed the inclusion of PowerShell and an IDE for the same, so that could be something that beckons. All in all, there is a certain solidity about Windows 7, though I am not so convinced of the claim of speedy startups at this stage. Time will tell and, being a beta release, it's bound to be full of debugging code that will not make it into the final version that is unleashed on the wider public.

A pleasant surprise…

4^th December 2007

Yesterday, when taking the screen grab for my post on Quanta Plus, I did the Alt + Print Screen shuffle as usual. However, when I did so, I was greeted with a dialogue box asking me where I wanted to store the PNG file that was to be produced and what I wanted to call it. The operation was as swish as that. On Windows, the screenshot gets stuffed into the clipboard for you to extricate it with your graphics editor of choice, so this was an interesting surprise. It's the sort of thing that can make a good impression, and it is striking that Linux seems to be ahead of Windows on this one. Who said Linux was less than user-friendly?

Why I will be keeping Windows close to hand for a while to come after a switch to Linux

2^nd December 2007

Even though I have moved to Linux, and it has been fulfilling nearly all of my home computing needs, I do and plan to continue to retain access to Windows courtesy of virtualisation technology. Thought keeping current with the world of the ever pervasive Windows is one motivation, there are others. In fact, now that Windows is more of a sideline, I may even get my hands on Vista at some point to take a further in-depth look at it, hopefully without having to suffer the consequences of my curiosity.

Talking of other reasons for hanging onto Windows, listening to music secured by DRM does come to mind. DRM is seen in a negative light by many in the open-source world, so Linux remains unencumbered by the beast. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the whole furore about Vista and DRM earlier this year had me wondering about a Linux future. However, I have been known to buy music from iTunes and would like to continue doing so. Though WINE might be one way to achieve this, retaining Windows seems a sounder option. That way, I am saved from having to convert my protected music files into either Ogg Vorbis or FLAC; the latter involves a lossless compression unlike the former, so the files are bigger with the additional quality that an audiophile would seek. MP3 is another option, yet there are those in the Linux world who frown upon anything patented. That makes getting MP3 support an additional task for those of us wanting it.

In my wisdom, I have succumbed to the delights of expensive web development tools like Altova's XMLSpy and Adobe's Dreamweaver. While I have found a way to get Quanta Plus to edit files on the web server directly and code hacking is my main way to improve my websites, I still will be having a bimble into Dreamweaver from time to time. I have yet to see XMLSpy's grid view replicated in the open-source world, so that should remain a key tool in my arsenal. While I haven't been looking too hard at open-source XML editors recently, there remains unexplored functionality in XMLSpy that I should really explore to see if it could be harnessed.

While I have included implicit references to this already, it needs saying that keeping Windows around also allows you to continue using familiar software. For some, this might be Microsoft Office, but OpenOffice and Evolution have usurped this in my case. Photoshop Elements is a better example for me. Digital transfers from scanners and DSLR's will stay in the world of Linux, while virtualisation allows me to process the images in whatever way I want. For now, I might just stick with the familiar before jumping ship to GIMP at some point in the future. With all that is written on Photoshop, having it there for learning new things seems a very sensible idea.

While open-source software can conceivably address every possible, there are bound to be niches that remain outside its reach. I use mapping software from Anquet when planning hillwalking excursions. It seems very much to be a Windows only offering and I have already downloaded a good amount of mapping, so Windows has to stay if I need to use this and the routes that I have plotted out before now. Another piece of software that finds its way into this bracket is my copy of SAS Learning Edition; there are times when a spot of learning at home goes a long way at work.

So, in summary, my reasons for keeping Windows around are as follows:

• Learning new things about the thing, since I am unlikely to escape its influence in the world of work
• Using iTunes to download new music and to continue to listen to what I have already
• Using and learning about industry standard web development tools like Dreamweaver and XMLSpy
• Easing the transition, by continuing to use Photoshop Elements, for example
• Using niche software like Anquet mapping

Though I suppose that many will relate to the above, Linux still has plenty to take over some of the above. In time, DRM may disappear from the music scene and not before time; accountants and shareholders may need to learn to trust customers. NVu and Quanta Plus could yet usurp Dreamweaver, and there may be an open-source alternative to XMLSpy like there is for so many other areas. The Photoshop versus GIMP choice will continue to prevent itself and all that is written about the former makes it seem silly to throw it away, however good the latter is. Even with changing over Linux equivalents of applications fulfilling standard needs, it still leaves niche applications like hillwalking mapping and that, together with the need to know what Windows might offer in the enterprise space, could be the enduring reasons for keeping it near to hand. That said, I can now go through whole days without firing up a Windows VM, a big change from how it was a few months ago. Still, I suppose that it's all too easy to stick with using one operating system at a time, which is Linux for me these days.

Is Windows 2000 support finished?

30^th March 2007