Inception, Part Two

Things haven't gone quite as I had planned, so we're not going to the next level "literally" yet like I promised, so for now I'll give you a little insight of what I've been up to along the lines of the Inception project.

Today I'm exploring what Linux distros work well in Virtualbox. So far, as we've seen, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx works great, Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meercat works, but with only partial interoperability with the host OS, due to it's new X version 1.9. Virtualbox's Guest Additions only supports version 1.8 so far.

I decided to try Fedora 14 Alpha, but to my dismay the live CD wouldn't boot at all. I checked online for solutions but unfortunately there is no support for alpha and beta guest operating systems in VirtualBox, which is sad for Maverick also.

Fedora 13 installed and booted fine, which is a huge step further than what I got with Fedora 14. Unfortunately I couldn't get the Guest Additions to install, no matter what I tried. I installed all the headers, necessary building dependencies and stuff, downloaded a kernel source RPM (which didn't quite install properly) but alas nothing helped. All I had was the default crappy cursor integration that Lucid also had when I first booted it up.

N.B. The default crappy cursor integration feels funny and does not hide the cursor when you leave the machine's window, whereas VirtualBox's Guest Additions' cursor integration hides the cursor, and feels exactly the same as the host's cursor.

I haven't used OpenSUSE for years, so I wasn't surprised that I was surprised by the GUI changes made since then. But what made me most excited was that OpenSUSE comes with full VirtualBox Guest Additions out of the box! Woot! Now I don't have to worry about THAT anymore! I ran the live CD and the first thing I noticed was the smoother mouse integration, then the windows had shadows, went transparent, wobbled, and then I dragged off the edge of the screen and the desktop cube went crazy. I guess the Compiz guys didn't take VirtualBox into consideration...

And now for our special guest for today, lets have a round of applause for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007! Yes I know it sucks compared to VirtualBox, and it eats my computer's resources, but it still kinda works. I only ever use it for running Windows 98 for occasional compatibility reasons, which are few, and because VirtualBox doesn't support Windows 98 (Did Sun perhaps think it was too old?). I decided to pull this old relic out of the closet and install Fedora 13 on it (Previously I did try 14 but it failed even more than on VirtualBox). To my surprise everything went fine, it works quite smoothly, and it connects to the internet. Now I just have to install the VM Additions (if they even work) which I will do another time.

Lucid and OpenSUSE Updating next to each other. Don't they look cute together!


All three running quite happily together. Purple, Blue, and Green:


So here's the summary:
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx: Works Great
Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meercat: Works, but with limited Guest Additions support (No 3D Acceleration or Automatic Screen Resizing)
Fedora 13: Works, but couldn't get Guest Additions to work
Fedora 14 Alpha: Couldn't even install it
OpenSUSE 11.3: Works fantastically, Guest Additions worked immediately out of the box
Fedora 13 on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007: lol

Thanks for reading.
Have a look at Part One of my Inception project.