Monday, December 27, 2010

Virtual Box 4

Virtual Box 4 is the latest edition of the freeware virtualization software offered by oracle.

New Features in this version.
  • Reorganization of VirtualBox into a base package and Extension Packs.
  • Major changes to the GUI.
  • VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts
  • New virtual hardware.
  • Improvements to OVF support.
  • Resource control: added support for limiting a VM’s CPU time and IO bandwidth.
  • Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
  • Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images; see chapter 8.21, VBoxManage modifyhd.
  • Guest Additions: support for multiple virtual screens in Linux and Solaris guests using X.Org server 1.3 and later
  • Lot of other improvements.
see http://www.virtualbox.org for details and changelog.

Seamless View - One of the great features of VirtualBox is the ability to switch to seamless view. Once the virtual machine is running select - "Machine" - "Switch to Seamless mode".

Virtual Box 4.0 running WindowsXP in seamless mode


see more screenshots below.

Virtual Box Manager Screen

Settings - General

Settings - System

Settings - Display

Settings - Storage

Settings - Audio

Settings - Network

Settings - Serial Ports

Settings - usb

Settings - Shared Folders

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Windows Like Task-bar in Ubuntu 10.10

I find the Gnome DockbarX really convenient to use. This really resembles a Windows 7 Taskbar environment. see screenshot and installation details below.

DockbarX Screenshot

Installation Instructions.

1. add the required repository.
"sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dockbar-main/ppa"

2. update
"sudo apt-get update"

3. install
"sudo apt-get install dockbarx dockbarx-themes-extra"

4. How did i get the ubuntu icon on the left of dockbar?
- right click panel
- add to panel
- select "main menu"
- move the main menu to the left of dockbar.