Sun xVM VirtualBox saved my Windows box from ...

Sun xVm Virtualbox saved my Windows Box from my WIFE !!!

I have been a long time open source fan and have used VirtualBox for some time on my various linux distro's. ( Mandriva/Mandrake, RedHat Ent./CentOXS ) Once the best features was Seamless. Basically a transparent - to the user - virtual machine on your main desktop -> Super Sweet !!


My son had just gone to bed and my wife and I were sitting down to dinner. While inhaling dinner my wife casually mentions that she needs to do some work on my windows computer. AKA my main Gaming Rig... While normally I don't have a problem with her using my gaming rig she decides to mention that the software she needs to use has been giving her problems and she said it had gotten corrupted. Sweet I thought to myself, how am I going to fix this????

Since I am a UNIX guys, more importantly a Sun OS Unix guy I decided to solve this problem by installing Sun xVM Virtualbox for Mac. ( think I forgot to mention that we are a majority mac house hold with a windows gaming box and a Sun E250 as my play toy )


I downloaded the virtualbox-.dmg package from Sun's website which automatically mounted once the download was complete. I installed the VBox software, created a growing file system ( 2.9 gig with 800 megs ram) and selected windows 2k3 as my virtual OS. Loaded the OS, 40+ minutes later... Huston we have lift off !!

Now my wife is using her own Macbook with xVM VirtualBox to complete the work she needs inside of a 2K3 VM.

Sun xVM VirtualBox saved my Windows Gaming Rig !!

Thanks Sun !!

Reason for using Open Solaris !

If you follow the latest buzz around operating systems you will know that OpenSolaris was recently released. I have downloaded and installed pervious alpha/beta version on various laptop/desktops, and even back then I was impressed. Today is no different. It's still impressive. It's NOT Linux... I repeat it's not Linux. However it's something much different and perhaps is something you should consider using for a few reasons.

Reasons:

1. ZFS -- ZFS is just an incredible file system.
2. Zones/Containers -- Really just an isolated jail for a copy of the operating systems. Think virtualization. It's sweet.

OpenSolaris includes both ZFS and Zone/Containers in this latest release. From a learning/professional growth this is must have to gain access into the Sun Solaris admin/engineering market.

Sun BigAdmin -- Info On Zones This is great area to learn about zones. There How-To section is pretty good..

Sun ZFS Learning Center Videos and information on ZFS and all the great futures of this file system.

From my prospective using OpenSolaris as your normal platform might be a bit over kill, however if you want to do some in depth learning that will give you real world experience give it a try.