Running a virtual machine is nothing new on Macs. Ever since Apple moved to Intel processors, virtualization came along for the ride. Virtualization means that you can run computer operating systems that are designed for Windows PC hardware on Macintosh.

There are two main players for creating virtual machines on Macs, Parallels and VMware Fusion. Both of those products are great, but they cost $70 each. If you are like me, and you have no real reason to run alternate operating systems, $70 is a lot to pay just to play around.

Last week, while I was listening to Twit.tv’s MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte talked about a program from Sun that allows you to create virtual machines for free. Sun’s VirtualBox is a full-featured machine virtualization solution. Creating a Linux virtual machine was extremely easy.

I downloaded VirtualBox and installed it on my computer. I downloaded the latest ISO file of Ubuntu and saved it on my desktop.

I opened VirtualBox and simply followed the instructions on the wizard that started when I first opened VirtualBox. I created a new virtual machine and then installed Ubuntu.

I was a little nervous doing it for the first time, but it didn’t take too much geekiness to get it all working. If you are somewhat good with computers, this should be no problem.

Right now, I am writing this blog post inside Linux on a virtual machine on my MacBook. It works.

I don’t really know what I will do with this other than simply play, but I was afraid that once I moved over to Apple computers full time, I would lose my chance to play with Linux. Now, that is no longer true.

The only problem I am having is I can’t make the screen any bigger than 800 x 600. That is a little confining, but I bet if I up my video RAM, that will be fixed.

Anyway, it is fun to geek it up every once in a while.

Now Ubuntu has come out with its latest version, 7.10 and I upgraded yet again.  This time it is a lot more stable on this computer, but it has taken me numerous tries to get wireless networking up and running.  Now, I am not a networking genius, but I have amassed at least some skillz, and it took all the tricks I have learned to get this computer back on the internets.

I am sure that if I wired this computer directly to the router with cat5 I am sure it would have worked immediately.  But, there is no way to run a wire from my router to this computer.  That means I have to use a USB Linksys wireless dongle thingy (yes, that is the technical name).

Ubuntu supports the USB thingy, but for some reason I had to unplug and re-plug and then manually configure it in order to make it work.  What the???  I would recommend this OS to more people if the networking was a little easier.  Most people need to be able to just plug in a peripheral and have it work.  If it doesn’t, most people will just give up and go back to Windows.

Here is how I finally configured it and made it work.  I switched over to manual configuration.  I typed in the ssid for my access point and then turned on DHCP and it finally got an IP address and started working.

So, if you are using Ubuntu and a Linksys Wireless-B USB network card this is how you can make it work

I am not a Microsoft head, but I also hate the haters (regardless of the product). Vista has received more that its fair share of bad press.

Every product has its good points and bad points and pledging total allegiance to only one product in any class of products is extraordinarily limiting. I am currently updating this blog with my old Mac laptop. Across the room is my home desktop PC that is a dual boot XP/Linux box. I know that I am hardly representative of most computer users, but I really don’t give much thought to the operating system anymore. Each OS has its good points and each has its frustrations. So the fact that Microsoft sells 20 million Vista licenses hardly comes as any surprise.

The rumors of Microsoft’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, and when it comes to computers, I am agnostic.

I went through a complete update and all seems to be well. I have the latest versions of all the programs that came with Ubuntu and all seems to be working. I still am a long way from completely understanding this OS, but at least it isn’t broken.

I tried to upload the latest version of the OS and I couldn’t get it to install. So, I am a version behind in the actual OS. But aside from that, I do have all the latest apps in this older version.

Hopefully, Ubuntu will work out whatever problem I was experiencing so that I can update the OS in the future, but in the meantime, all seems good.

I did have a little trouble getting my wireless internet up and running, but other than that, it was pretty easy, and as you can see, I am on the net so I did it.

My home computer is a little slow. I heard that Ubuntu, or any other linux OS, breathes new life into old hardware, and I think they’re right. Firefox opens quite quickly, and downloads even seem a bit snappier.

When I go to my main site, www.murdog.com, it opens like liquid lightning…..sooper fast!.

I was scared to install this on a computer that already has XP on it. I was afraid that I would some how lose that install and then I would be stuck with linux. Well Ubuntu was fairly easy. After the install, it noticed that I already had a copy of Windows and asked if I wanted to make the system dual-boot. That means it will ask you on boot which OS you want and then it will start the one you chose. Of course, I said yes and what do you know… it worked.

The install wasn’t without its problems. I first tried to install the latest build of the OS, and for whatever reason, it didn’t work. It would just get stuck on the initial splash screen. I read in the forums (did I mention that I am definitely a geek?) that people who were having that problem were succeeding using an alternate version. I downloaded the alternate and it worked. The only problem with the alternate version was the installer was text based rather than GUI based. That scared me a bit. But, all is well and I am on the net. Yea me!

MurDog, the dual-boot geek OUT!!!