Linux Distro for Virtual PC 2007?
 

I'm having fun with Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista-equipped laptop. I'd like to load a Linux distro to run within it. Unfortunately, Ubuntu doesn't properly detect the video mode and gives garbage on the screen. Can anyone recommend a Linux distro that will work?

Which version of Ubuntu pukes on you? I've been able to run 6.10 in virtualiztion but not 7.4 herd 5....

Try SuSE 10.2, its been my number one choice for a long time until I gave utunbu another look a few weeks ago... SuSE is anything but lightweight but its got good management tools and a nice package manager....
you won't get desktop effects under virtualization but SuSE does include compiz/XGL...

I tried Ubuntu 6.06. However, I just found instructions for getting 6.10 to run under Virtual PC 2007, so I'm going to try that tonight. I'm downloading the distro now. I'd like to stick with Ubuntu because I'm setting up an old PC with it and it would be nice to be consistent. :)

Im liking ubuntu more and more... its really a pretty nice desktop. As little as a year ago I'd have been with the folks saying 'linux isnt ready for the desktop' but with 6.10 I'm not so sure... if you can use a mouse and firefox then you are good to go with 6.10....

there's the whole business about flash and the nvidia drivers...but it is still a great OS.

let us know if VPC will do any of the desktop effects or the 3d stuff!

I'm virtually a Linux virgin. I've done some Tivo hacking, which is done in Linux, but it was mostly a cookbook operation. I really didn't understand a lot of what I was doing. Eventually, I want to set up a Linux server for ftp and file serving on my network, but that's well off in the future.

Ubuntu does work with 2k7, apparently. But the emulated video card behaves weirdly when using 24/32 bit colour.

The fix: install in text mode, and force the default colour depth to 16.

Details (from the 2k7 beta): http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=260749

Yup -- that's what I found on the internet. I'm downloading the alternate version of Ubuntu 6.10 now. Evidently, the video emulation in Virtual PC 2007 reports itself as 24-bit compatible, but it's not.

I think Ubuntu is a lot like OS X...it can be quite powerful or very simple depending on the user and their demands... My one knock is the lack of a great GUI admin tool... There is Webmin which is a web-based admin tool that is quite capable. The only downside is that its not available via apt-get so you have to manually install it...but once you do it makes setting up things like FTP and SMB shares a snap, really painless... I've started using ubuntu 6.10 server and its just lightening fast and with webmin I can get a box configured and running in no time! I just moved a box to my parents house a few hours away. They have a t-1 and i have a router-to-router site-to-site vpn b/t the two of us, so I'm backing up my machines to that remote box and then allowing them to back up their machines to one of my servers...totally secure and redundant.

I'm not sure I'd know how to manually install Webadmin, but I plan to spend some time fooling around in Linux before I try to set up a server. My dedicated experimentation box is a 500 MHz AMD K6 which, I suspect, will be fast enough for my purposes.

I think that should be fine... I might recommend the server version though, since its doesnt have a gui.... but that in itself makes things tricky...
there are some good install instructions for webmin here: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-7507.html
its really quite simple...

I still think ubuntu lacks good gui admin tools for services... so another option is OpenSuSE 10.2 which has 'yast2' which is a great (but bloated) admin tool set. With an 'X server' (which is really a client) you can run the gui admin tools on any remote computer. Its been a while since I've searched for an X Server on windows, but the basic premise is that run a small app on your windows desktop and then you can launch programs on the linux box and they display their gui on the windows screen (gross over simplification)... but with things like yast on SuSE its a very easy way to manage a server.

Nevertheless, with webmin on ubuntu server 6.10, things work very well. In fact, I was blown away when I clicked "windows file sharing" and it said: ' samba is not installed, click here to download and install samba'...so it went out and did the apt-get and installed samba and set up windows file sharing all via the web interface in less than 2 minutes.... really made a gui superfluous.

I'm about ready to give up on Ubuntu.

The installation on my laptop failed for no discernible reason -- it simply stopped after several hours. I restarted it and it indicated a CD-ROM failure (I hope it didn't kill the drive in my laptop by running it for hours). I've burned a new CD and I'm re-re-installing it from an external CD drive.

The installation of the server on my wife's old machine failed -- twice. The first time it installed, went to reboot and crashed on the reboot with an Error 18. I looked it up on the internet and found that it occurs on some machines when the OS tries to access larger sectors than the BIOS could handle. I re-partitioned, re-installed the software and rebooted. This time it didn't crash, went into the boot sequence but only ran for 10 seconds or so before it hard-booted the machine. It kept cycling like that 'til I turned it off.

I'm trying Ubuntu one more time on my laptop. I'm also downloading the Slackware distros, both desktop and server versions.

I'm not impressed. :mad:

Ah . . . success!

I've finally gotten Ubuntu 6.10 running under Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista laptop. Now, if I can just figure out Ubuntu server for my other machine.

Glad it worked out!

This is an interesting thread. :confused: Most people seem to want to try and run Windoze under Linux, not do things the other way around :eek:

Microsoft is giving away Virtual PC 2007 and, on my 2 GHz Core 2 Duo machine (with 2 gigs of RAM) it was (1) a natural choice for those few programs that won't run under Vista, but will run under XP Pro, and (2) an easy way to play around with Linux, which I've been meaning to do for a while. I couldn't get my VPN software (TheGreenbow) to run under Vista and didn't want to spend $150 or so on a new VPN client. TheGreenbow runs great under Vitual PC 2007 and XP Pro and the CPU overhead is so low on my machine that, literally, I don't notice the difference with both OSs running at the same time. Now that I've got Ubuntu running, I notice that it is considerably slower than XP Pro (and, of course, Vista) and also rather bland -- it's chief virtue seems to be that it looks like Windows but its Not Windows. I doubt if I'll use it as anything more than a novelty.

Now, a Linux server is another story -- I've got to figure out what's going on with Ubuntu server on my old desktop, as I'd really like to set it up as an FTP and file server.

If ubuntu runs slower than XP in VPC I'd call that very fishy.... Maybe Microsoft would make the argument that they can optimize VPC for windows b/c they know the code...but true virtualization on a dual core should be pretty much like native...

VMware has a free product and Parallels is like $50 for the windows version. I'm not suggesting that you need ubuntu badly enough to shell out $50 or anything. I think that you are probably right in that you won't get a whole lot out of ubuntu that you cannot do with vista (except the shell, which to me is invaluable :) )... but I'd be paranoid about why one OS runs faster than another, epically when ubuntu really should be smoking fast... on the other hand, surfing in ubuntu is considerably safer than XP and maybe marginally safer than Vista... so it does make a nice sandbox environment.

I didn't know there was a free version of VMware -- I'll check it out. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Microsoft "de-optimizted" Virtual PC for Linux-based OSs.

One of the advantages of Virtual PC is that it isolated the rest of the computer from anything that can get through my firewall and various anti-malware software.

When I looked at the VPC 2007 page, it doesn't even claim to support linux. That doesn't mean it doesn't work, but I'm not surprised it doesn't work optimally. Though I recall hearing something that VPC supported Linux at some point.

-David

When you set up a virtual machine, one of the options presented, in addition to all the Windows OSes, is "other." I'd also note that I had installed Ubuntu (and now Suse) on an old desktop machine that formerly ran Win2000 for my wife (I recently replaced it with a nice new laptop for her). Ubuntu was just horrible on that machine -- slower than Win2000. I haven't used Suse enough yet to form an opinion -- I just installed it last night. However, I've already noted problems -- I have to manually install Flash for FireFox, it's missing the most basic codecs to play, for example, DV-codec encoded AVIs, etc.

I want the Linux box to use an FTP and file server. However, I can't imagine using Linux as an alternative to Vista or XP or, even, Win2000.

For videos, check out VLC (www.videolan.org), it plays everything and you dont have to worry about codecs

Thankfully, not everybody that uses Linux is looking for such an alternative. Software working together, doing what they do best. That's how it should be. Just as Mac OS and Windows seem to be best at desktops, Linux servers rock.

I've been monitoring some of the Vista newsgroups and you'd be suprised at the number of trolls who post over there saying something, like "Vista is for losers, Linux rocks!" (actually, usually "Linux rocks, dude!"). There's nothing wrong with choosing an OS simply because it's Not Microsoft, but Linux on the desktop is clearly not fungible with Vista (though I could see someone who needs only basic word processing, mail, web browsing and the like managing with a Linux box).

This is true of a bunch of hardware with Ubuntu, which is a shame because it tends to turn people off--when all that is usually required is the text (nee alternate) installation and to tweak a conf file and a reboot. I most recently ran into this while resurrecting an old doorstop (IBM T21) into a toy to browse with.

While I would not put Ubuntu onto a server platform, it's as good as it gets for the desktop. Do that, spend some time (or $50 to codeweavers) gettin wine to run office, and have at it.

I would argue this is a gross oversimplification. Virtualizing a hardware platform is NOT an easy task. In particular, the x86 architecture has many "features" which are difficult to get right and implement efficiently. The addition of hardware assistance (AMD Pacifica and Intel Vanderpool technologies) makes it slightly easier, but it is still a challenge.

For linux distributions that have "supported" optimizations, see this webpage: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...03/566273.aspx. Although the stuff is written for Virtual Server, they can be used with VPC 2007 as well.

No conspiracy theories needed.. Linux is officially supported on MS Virtual Server product which is an enterprise-oriented product:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...t/default.mspx

Not sure what the VPC story is, but 2007 is very new so it could still have some issues.