OS Chasing (Part 2): More VirtualBox and Ubuntu
After taking a break for a day or two from the fun of making VirtualBox and Ubuntu play nice, I started up again with the goal of fortifying my install into something more useful than just a clean install. I managed to get stymied by VirtualBox again, as I struggled and ultimately failed to setup a shared folder between Vista and my Ubuntu VM.
Although this feature seems like a pretty baseline one for a virtualization product, currently the support for it in VirtualBox is primitive. You have to use the command line to manually setup a shared folder for the VM in the host machine (Vista), then go into Ubuntu and mount the shared folder yourself via the command line. This approach was well explained in the manual and worked, except for when I tried to copy files in and out of the folder, which caused Ubuntu to hang. It is hard to tell who was at fault here, me, Ubuntu, VirtualBox or even Vista. Vista at this point was preoccupied trying to stop me from using Windows Live Writer Beta, which apparently needs administrative rights to let you blog.
With that avenue temporarily blocked, I moved on to trying to grab some more applications. Ubuntu comes loaded up with a decent set, but of course I wanted to see how the install/remove process was handled (graphically, not via the command line). The short answer is remarkably well. Ubuntu has its own built in update manager and add/remove programs utility, both of which worked just as you would expect.
However, I was really impressed by Automatix2, a really slick application installer. Not only did it point me to free codecs to enable MP3 playback, I quickly found some other nice extras, including an install for extra Windows style fonts that aren't installed in Ubuntu by default. Once I picked what I wanted, the installation process ran nicely by itself, which allowed me to watch Trevor Hoffman get save 499 for the Padres and digest the fact that the Padres are now 10 for 11 in one run games this year; a scary stat for you baseball fans out there.
Beyond a Padres win, I was thrilled to start up my newly installed Eclipse and see that PyDev, the plug in for Python development was installed already. I got that configured, took another snapshot of my VM and ended the day much happier with part 2 of my Ubuntu experience. Next up, another shot at those shared folders.