I've never used VB but I want to try out some other distros just to see some different implementations and such. In my repos, I've got 2 different variations of VIrtualBox, one seems to be just VB, the other is listed as VirtualBox-Guest, can somepone point me in the right direction? There will be another 100 questions after this one so buyer beware, LOL.
I get mine directly from the VirtualBox website, it's more up to date than what's in your OS's repos, and is exactly what you need (get the corresponding extension pack too). They have it in rpm packages too
VirtualBox-guest will be the guest modules and software... for an OS that is running in VirtualBox. They call it the "Guest Additions"
P.S. You do not need the proprietary "Extension Pack" unless you care about having direct access to USB 2 in the guest. I can't say I have ever used USB directly from the guest, let alone caring about USB 2. I would not care to use thumb drives and the like, because there's an almost bare metal speed implementation of "shared folders" for copying data to/from the host system. You wouldn't even likely want USB for printing these days... you'd just print to a networked, or network shared printer. Even if you did want to print to a USB printer directly from the guest, it would not need USB 2 to print.
I needed to use the extensions to get through the jiggery-pokery needed to fiv my mp3/ogg player. I've also found the capability handy for messing with other things my linux distro-of-the-day couldn't quite manage. Mind you, I spend all of a couple of hours in a VM a week and then only because of some other stuff I'm doing, so it wouldn't destroy my entire life if it didn't work.
Power is something that should be given to those who need it to serve and withheld from those who seek it to rule.
Surprise Zema, the repo and Oracle versions are the same, someone is on the ball. Thanks for the info Grogan, got VB and the extension pack installed in between posts. Now, how much room will I need for this, I've only got around 40 gigs for this X install, will I be able to designate which HDD to store the images on? I'm looking at trying Mint, Suse, Windows 8, maybe even a Deb distro, just messing around over the next couple of months.
Yes, you can designate where to store the hard disk images. THAT is done in the settings of the individual virtual machines though, usually when you create them you would change that setting (but you can move the files and change that setting if you wish to). It remembers the last setting though (i.e. when you go to create a new VM or hard disk, it uses the last setting by default)
I always create my disk images statically... the space for them is preallocated. The other way is silly, and degrades performance when they need to be dynamically increased. They never shrink again though once its allocated (at least, not by themselves). Also, you can run into a situation where you run out of disk space because you don't remember how many VMs you have created on that disk and each of them needs to increase the size of their disk images as they are being used. That's the main reason I don't do it that way. (e.g. I decide that VM is getting 40 gigs, so the file gets created. It's allocated, won't get fragmented and if I need the space for something else I'll delete it)
Note: Storage locations of the machine files (which are trivial in size) can be separate from the virtual disk image locations. The location of the machine files is set in global preferences.
OK, more questions on the way, I've DL'd Mint12 and left it as an ISO, do I need to burn a DVD to use or is the ISO mountable and useable, I'm such a newb, lol, I'll probably try to do this tomorrow.
You can mount the ISO directly and save yourself a DVD. This is something they got right.
Thanks for that DA, one more ? for tomorrow, I've set aside a 80 gig partition, what should I format as, Ext3, NTSF, etc, I will have windows and linux installs in VB.
You will not be using partitions directly with VirtualBox (you could use a raw disk, but I would not recommend it and nor would they) you are creating virtual disk image files. Therefore, you want to use the filesystem of the OS you are running VirtualBox under (the host system) for the partition. Since you are running it under Linux, you would want to format that partition as Ext4 (or Ext3 if that's what you're using for your other ones)
You format your virtual disks to whatever filesystem the Guest OS is going to be using, during the install usually.
I had never used the fixed allocation option before, until today. I have windows 7 installed in a vm created and stored on a second drive with 30 gb of space allocated. What a difference that made! No wonder I have never been happy with vm machines. I just thought that was the way it was. The aero interface seems to work pretty well with the experimental driver.
Son-of-a-gun.
I actually got this working today with Mint 12, thanks to everyone's help, it seems like a really good way to try different things out. OK, next question: I see that it's a live session, is there any way to add programs, get updates, or even get the nvidia drivers installed while it's running in VB?
As a live session, not easily. You need to use the install function. It's there on the desktop just under the bottom left corner of the applications drop-down menu in your screenshot.
Just install it in VB, then you can do all that stuff the same as on a real machine
Thanks Zema, got it installed properly now along with all the updates and the Cinnamon DT, it looks pretty good. I still don't like Gnome but I'm giving it a go.
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