VirtualBox UI is horrible but ...

[Dan Bikle]

People,

I noticed that the UI offered by VirtualBox is okay for doing simple things.

But for software development it is horrible.

I experimented some with VMware Player and it seems to be a little better.

The option I prefer is to stay away from the UI offered by both VirtualBox and VMware.

My preference is to install XWindows on my laptop.

XWindows allows you to see a full screen editor on your laptop while the editor is actually running on the Linux virtual box.

Installing and running XWindows on Mac is easy just ask google how to do it.

XWindows on Windows is best installed by installing software called cygwin.

Once you have cygwin installed you can then install XWindows.

I discuss some of the details here:

http://www.bikle.com/techtips/

If you have money to spare you can solve the UI problem with money.

A local company can build you a nice linux box for $499 and they can ship it to you:

http://zareason.com/shop/Limbo-6250A.html

Currently they have a special which allows you to ask for both copper and WIFI networking.

During checkout, you can ask them to install Centos6.5.

Also they might configure networking for you if you ask.

The easiest network configuration is to have the linux box get its IP address via DHCP when it boots.

If room is scarce in your home office they offer a tiny Linux box which is powerful enough to do the class homeworks:

http://zareason.com/shop/Zini-1440.html

It also comes with both copper and WIFI ethernet.

Dan