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raymac46

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You just have to love the crazy possibilities to geek it up these days. Here I am running a Midori browser on Ubuntu 15.10 on VirtualBox on Windows 10. And I can still post on SNL. Go figure.

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V.T. Eric Layton

You're not really here, though. You're virtual raymac46. My antivirus actually thinks you are a bot. :hysterical:

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securitybreach

I wish I could find the screenshot but once I went three levels deep virtually. I had one distro running virtually inside another distro running virtually inside the host distro. It ran a little slow because back then I could only allocate 1gb of ram to each distro but since I now have 32gb of ram, I may try it again today.. Hehehe

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once I went three levels deep virtually. I had one distro running virtually inside another distro running virtually inside the host distro.

 

I recon that is how the Dr does the magic with the Tardis. :228823:

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You just have to love the crazy possibilities to geek it up these days. Here I am running a Midori browser on Ubuntu 15.10 on VirtualBox on Windows 10. And I can still post on SNL. Go figure.

 

Now if you said you were doing all that on a Windows 10 phone I'd be dead impressed. :Laughing:

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You just have to love the crazy possibilities to geek it up these days. Here I am running a Midori browser on Ubuntu 15.10 on VirtualBox on Windows 10. And I can still post on SNL. Go figure.

 

Now if you said you were doing all that on a Windows 10 phone I'd be dead impressed. :Laughing:

Or a potato! :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I wish I could find the screenshot but once I went three levels deep virtually. I had one distro running virtually inside another distro running virtually inside the host distro.

Nice. I had ArchBang running in Windows 10 running in ArchLinux a couple of weeks ago. I dumped windows 10 since, but when I have some free time I might try again with something ealse... Also, If you've seen the movie Inception...

inception.jpg

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Call me shallow but I have only run a broad selection of guests on one or more hosts. VMs help me decide if I want to proceed further with a given distro. That's how I found Manjaro and MX-15 which are very useful netbook distros.

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Oddly enough I never actually used virtual machines before I installed Arch, but I tried a lot of distros before that. In those days I kept a Windows partition that I kept my work backed up on and didn't mess with. I originally set up a VM for the first time around last Christmas after getting nostalgic about Windows XP.

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I used to dual boot Windows XP and Linux but with all the EFI stuff nowadays I'd just as soon use Linux in a VM on Windows.

I once had a test machine with 4-5 distros installed and chainloading but eventually I just switched to virtual computing. I am only going to use one distro at a time on older machines anyway - and that has to be a lightweight one.

My VM hosts have quad core CPUs and 16 GB of RAM so they are the best ones I can use for VirtualBox.

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I am only going to use one distro at a time on older machines anyway - and that has to be a lightweight one.

Just as an interesting note, I once had slackware 14 with KDE 4 running on my first homebrew desktop at 256 megs of ram and, ancient single core processor and an unbranded, unmarked graphics card. It sort of made a snail look like Speedy Gonzales, but it worked. I may try plasma 5 in a VM with the same specs to see if that works.

As far as EFI goes, I recently came across this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Arch-Linux

The Arch Wiki probably goes into more detail, and most distos automate everything anyway, but it could be a handy reference point for setting up partitions.

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The only machine I have that handles EFI is my homebuilt from 2013. The Gigabyte board can do either legacy or EFI and is equally at home with GPT or MBR disks.

The last install I did on that unit was Linux Mint 17 which formatted the disk as MBR and uses the legacy BIOS settings. But again that was only Linux - no Windows on that machine ever.

Most of my old units have really horrid graphics so the sophisticated desktops like Plasma, Cinnamon or GNOME3 tend to choke and sputter. I tend to go with Xfce whenever I can. Same thing in VBox which is a graphics challenged approach.

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I've never actually had to deal with EFI myself. My most modern computer (A lenovo running Arch) is one of the last of the Windows 7 era, originally booted with the 'Ultimate' version of that OS, which (at the time anyway) still used MBR and BIOS. I do have the option to enable EFI (Probably put there to allow 64 bit windows 8 or 10 to run), but changing that would require a re-configuration (possibly even re-installation) of my current OS. Although I would gain some experience, I like my machine the way it is. (To be honest, I'm starting to feel rather attached to it...!)

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As I get more experience with VirtualBox I can see my Virtual needs going in two opposite directions:

  • In Windows I want to have a reliable Linux installation I can use if needed, without all the EFI and dual boot stuff.
  • In Linux I want a laboratory to check out different distros and desktop environments.

I have chosen in Windows to go with just one virtual machine - good old stable, boring Debian Jessie. Xfce is my desktop environment - no wobbly windows needed. I am experienced with the Debian universe, know how to get the Guest Additions installed, and I'm pretty confident that the Debian guest will survive updates without crashing in VBox. I see Debian as a long term solution here.

In Linux using Linux Mint as host, I can install 4-5 distros if I want. I see a lot of rotation here. If I find a distro like MX-15 or Manjaro I actually want to install, I don't intend to keep it in VirtualBox.

A distro's stability in VirtualBox is important. Much as I love Arch Linux I have had trouble with it surviving updates as a guest. What is also important is the ability to install guest additions easily. Arch does this very well and the Debian distros are excellent - Ubuntu really shines as a VBox guest.

Because a distro doesn't work all that great in VirtualBox does NOT mean it would be a dog if installed in real life - but I believe that if a developer goes out of the way to make it a good VBox distro, then there is a real concern for quality in all respects.

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If I remember correctly, Debian was the OS I used the longest before I installed Arch (not counting my Windows days). It's great for stability, and served me well, but I switched to Arch because I felt like trying something new. As far as Ubuntu goes, it somehow insists on being the distro I just can't get along with. I tried it in Virtualbox a couple of months ago (I'd never actually used it before then), and it insisted on constantly overclocking the two CPU cores I allotted to it. It did however come in handy at one point when I messed up my partition table by mistake :oops: . I used Ubuntu to re-partition the drive, then ran that for a couple of days. It did what I needed it to then, but I'm not exactly a fan of the Unity interface, so I was glad to get Arch installed again, which is, I guess, just what I'm most used to.

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Right now my Arch Virtual Machine is badly broken. The latest version of X borked the Guest Additions video so I have a nice Command Line install.

There is a workaround with a Boot option I'll try later on today. Livin' on the Fault Line.

That's why I stick to Debian if I want a really reliable VM for use in Windows.

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Back in business. The Grub boot option fixed matters for now. Arch has a great community when things go south due to an upgrade.

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