Ok, let me apologize ahead of time because this blog post will not be an in depth review of Oracle’s Virtualbox. I started this out as a daily review of what I think about different software or services pertaining to open source but I hit a small glitch with one of my favorite software packages. It seems that due to some tweaking of dual screen setups I have somehow found my Virtualbox setup a little broken. I will come back to this as I have to fix this in order to work with the distributions I know and love so well on a regular basis. So lets get started.
It would be a shame to try to explain virtualization in a short blog post but I will give you a quick run down on it that might make a seasoned professional cringe. Virtualization is software for making a fake computer inside of your own computer. So, how is this useful? As a computer guy I have to work with people using a lot of different types of operating systems (Windows, Mac, and a couple Linux, BSd’s and Unix’s). I have a very good memory but over the phone I sometimes can’t remember exactly what my client is looking at. My solution to this is having Virtualbox and about 10 different operating systems that fully work and now my computer is that operating system that they are looking at and I can work in it. Yes I even have one running Windows 98 because there has been the rare situation where a person actually still uses it (before I get them to use a Linux that is far more functional on older hardware).
How does this work for you? I have looked at quite a few articles on the different virtualization software the biggest competitor being VMware. Now don’t get me wrong. I really like VMware too but a while back I went totally Virtualbox because VMware’s really good virtualization workstation costs a little money and I’m big on teaching companies and small businesses to do the most for next to nothing. To do that, I have to live in the software and I do (I’ll tell you more later on how this is useful for companies). Before that, let’s look really quickly at the setup.
Virtualbox has a major feature that I also look for in software as much as possible It’s cross platform. That means it can be installed on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Once installed you’ll be able to get a quick and easy walk through showing you how to setup a space on your hard drive for an operating system setup ???virtual??? hardware and next thing you know you’ll see a whole different computer in front of you. This virtual hardware could be whatever you dream of like multiple dvd drives blah blah blah. You’ll have to look into it further for that.
Now, all of that to say this: You can do way more for less! Here’s how. If you haven’t noticed most people are not using half of the power that these modern computers have. I see more people with 4 gigs or RAM and they’re just running a web browser and maybe typing up some notes in a word processor. Do you know that you can also run a server in the background using Virtualbox to let all your office connect to? I have also had a situation where a person only had one computer. I ran a Virtualbox with a Linux server on it and that one computer is now a desktop and a server that everyone could connect to. This required a little secret sauce using a domain name, good router setup and Dyndns but it made a small business seem large.
Join me next time for more about open source software that you’ll love and anyone will find useful.