[SGVLUG] Linux laptops

[Scott Packard]

I've used VirtualBox since 2008.  It certainly hurt to use in the early
days, and has improved a lot.
I was told back then that Sun's engineers had it on their desktops in order
to develop Solaris 10x64, and their -x64 got a lot better over time.

I think I've gotten used to its idiosyncrasies, such as I usually go in and
choose bridge over NAT for my VM networks, and compiling VirtualBox
extensions means you have to install a compiler with your Linux or you
won't be able to install the extensions.  You have to go in and turn on
bidirectional clipboard and bidirectional  In a week or two I'll be
migrating VMs to another PC at work, as my current box is 5 years old and
I'm getting a refresh.  I've migrated my home box and it's relatively easy,
just, 40GB/VM across the network takes some time.  VirtualBox takes more
manual work than VMWare Workstation; both take some reading.

I use VMWare Workstation far less often.  I inherited an 8.0 at work,
accidentally wiped all the VMs when I didn't know what I was doing (very
difficult to tell where the VMs were stored), had to rebuild everything,
then eventually upgrade to 11.0 and now 12.0.  Painless upgrade.  Nicer
screen capture ability (good for developing training materials), really
nice feature to do driverless printing - you don't install a printer, you
just print and somehow it uses your host OS printer.
(It's a hassle to install a printer every time you spin up a VM.)
Drag-and-drop is better.
VMWare player is free for non-commercial personal use; workstation costs.
Wikipedia says they
are now called VMWare Workstation Player and VMWare Workstation Pro.
"In January 2016 the entire development team behind VMWare Workstation and
Fusion was disbanded and all US developers were immediately fired.[9]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#cite_note-9>[10]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#cite_note-10>[11]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#cite_note-11>[12]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#cite_note-12> The future
of these products remains vague however the company promised that
development would continue."

I'll be installing a 500GB SSD for the VMs because I can't stand the slow
I/O of a regular drive anymore.  You're always I/O bound with a lot of VMs
running.

Kind of the nice thing about virtualization is I can build a stock Linux,
put some of my customization in it, ssh keys, then snapshot it as a
baseline.  Now, I can go about working on security hardening the thing,
making discoveries and mistakes, then rollback to the baseline and harden
it programmatically and make sure I've captured everything I've done.  I've
grown very fond of this ability.

If you are in a classroom, it may be of benefit to have that ability, in
case someone messes up their VM, or if you want to rollback to a pristine
state after a class.

Regards, Scott




On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:49 AM, Scott Packard <spackard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I run VirtualBox in a Windows 7 load.
> Too many times I want something in Win7 and want a fully running RHEL or
> Sol10x64 (or more) up at the same time.
>
> Regards, Scott
>
> On Thursday, March 10, 2016, Dustin Laurence <dllaurence at dslextreme.com>
> wrote:
>
>> It looks like I may be able to influence some laptop purchases at the
>> boys' school--but unfortunately, it's a last minute deal I have to move
>> on right away, and I doubt I'll have time to research the current
>> generation of laptops.  Fortunately, I suspect a few of you may have
>> bought a laptop recently.
>>
>> I would like to identify current windows laptops that will dual-boot
>> Linux well (for some of the kids who are interested in programming and
>> real computer knowledge) without confusing the windows users (everybody
>> else) who don't know what dual-boot means. They should be inexpensive,
>> but not to the point of being cheap junk that will overheat if you do
>> something more challenging than read email. The goal, obviously, is to
>> have computers that are useful for the kids who want to have a 'coding
>> club' and learn real things as well as for what the teachers come up with.
>>
>> Anyway, suggestions welcome.
>>
>> Dustin
>>
>>
>>
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