Windows as a Guest on a Linux (ubuntu) host

After having been through all those days of triple boot and quadruple boot systems, i am coming back to a single boot machine now.  This time with my work laptop with Ubuntu as the main and the only OS.  Since i knew i could never complete that dream of running everything from linux in my work place in the near future, i decided to go with the only other choice to achieve it with immediate effect.

So what are my work place requirements. i need to have a firefox with silverlight.  That is the only thing for which i need Windows, ok, may be occasionaly for something else like, i don’t know…. I can’t think of any thing else.  and though even that can be circumnavigated with Wine, the video chat on gmail is another thing which will become a road block.

So to solve these, i decided to install Windows on Virtual Box with Ubuntu as Host.  This i thought will solve the problem.  But, yeah it did solve the problem of firefox with silverlight.  But Virtual Box is not allowing to enable to use of webcam to the guest OS.  It has to be a small problem somewhere i think.  Will look into it.  And to solve the problem of not having a anti-virus, I am allowing internet only to firefox, and have removed the access to the rest of the system.  I did it with Squid on the host.  It feels good, to be close to achieving the original thought.  But i can live with a little Evil i guess.

For Virtual Box installation i followed the instructions in this page under the title Debian Based Distributions.  Just in case if you are not able to open it.

add the following line in your repositories list in Synaptic Package Manager (settings -> repositories -> other software)

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lucid non-free

add the key to the Synaptic Package Manager (settings -> repositories -> authentication)

then say

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.2

That should do it.  I mean that is all i did. and i had to go thru this to understand how to access shared folders form host to guest and why the display resolution went to 800×600 when i made the shared folder access to work.  It was frustrating, the display always going to 800×600 from 1024×768  finally figured out, that it was the Virtual Box Display Driver which was causing it.  Then i just uninstalled just the display driver, and override it with the default driver whatever windows took itself.  And that is it.  Things are working fine for now.  Just the small thorn of WebCam access from host to guest.  Will soon try to find a way out.

Orangescape Studio

I have been trying for a complete switch to Linux in my laptop for a long time.  Though i achieved it for my desktop in home, Every time i get a plan to switch to linux, the Engg dept comes up with a new version which makes me to wait some more.

But with WINE i had been able to make the things to work in linux.  But as it happens, many a time the application fail to work even with wine.  Now after close to 4 to 5 months of trying to make the new Orangescape studio work on linux, atlast it works.  Even though it is a webapp still we need wine.

The latest Update of Kernel to 2.6.31-20 + a higher internet connection speed made it possible.  I had installed WINE 1.1.31 long back.  I had installed Silverlight 3 + Firefox 3.5.6 (windows version) on WINE.  It had not been working till last weekend, when i last updated the system. (Kernel version 2.6.31-20).  Plus the new changes which the Engg made over the last week.  Now it is working.  I did some basic validations and a straight workflow.  It worked well.  But i could notice the CPU usage shooting up when doing Workflow design.  But nothing so great to make the system unstable or crash to firefox as how it was happening before.

Studio

Process Designer

The Browser

The Operating System

But it is not working with moonlight.  Seems moonlight has a lot of catching up to do.

The Machine:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 @ 2 Ghz
• 2GB RAM
• Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic koala)

Update:

It works with Firefox 3.6, and seems like with Fx3.6 the working is more smother than with Fx3.5.x.  The CPU doesn’t go above 60% when loading or using Process Designer, which was not the case with the previous versions.  It would hit 95% in both CPU’s of my laptop in Fx3.5.x.  May be i should be using it a bit more regularly and try out different things before going all out on the decision of deleting Windoze out.  Still have a few doubts where it might stumble or even crash.  Need to check those out.

Moonlight Vs Silverlight

I was down with fever today, so had a lot of freetime.  I was just roaming on the net and i remembered it was a long time since i checked on moonlight. I was counting on moonlight to make it possible to work our new product on linux. I went and saw that the latest beta release was 1.99.9. My guess is that this would be the last beta release. but i may be wrong. there could be 1.99.10. But the thing is our’s still does not run with the current beta release. I don’t think the guys in my office will not try to fix and make things work with moonlight. so if it works out of box with moonlight( a thought echoed by someone with whom i talked about this in my office) there is a chance.

I don’t know in what way i can contribute back. I ain’t an expert in coding. I can’t send feedback to mono team coz, i really don’t know if it is a issue with moonlight, or have the guys used something in someway that it works only with silverlight for now.  I really don’t know what i am going to do this time.

Microsoft Silverlight & Linux…….

It has been a long time since i wrote. Well it has been really a long time, stuck in the worst city Bangalore, then moving back. Being in there in certain things. Having a fifteen minutes of fame. Everything was there. I did miss writing here in blogger. Though there was twitter to write to, it is not fun. But a great way to say out ideas short and sweet.

Well, after a long time, and trying to figure a way out to make Linux my main os at work, i succeded last week… Yes! DimensioN Studio 2.4 started to work in linux, it took a little hard work to figure out which files were missing. With a little more help from winetricks, i did get it to work properly via wine. It was so much fun doing it. I was just happy that i need not have to move into windows anymore.

Then i just thought of giving the new browser based cloud product of ours a try from linux. But this darn Microsoft agains comes into frustrate me. Silverlight doesn’t seem to work with linux. and every attempt to make the new product work with Mono Moonlight also failed. It was frustrating to think that i have to login back to windows just to work with something which is browser based. This is not fair…..

Talk about microsoft and fairness, what am i talking? So i had to give the error messages and i was able to only hope that either mono team will release Moonlight 2.0 soon and it would be compatible with Silverlight 3.0, or our engineering team will make sure it will make changes to accomodate the moonlight too. But who knows….

The suddenly today when we were just discussing things, suddenly it turned towards the new product and linux compatibility. And My interviewer asked me why don’t you try with wine or whisky and run the windows version of browser and try to make it work. This was a nice idea. Firefox 3.5.3 was up in 5 minutes, but then again Silverlight decided to play bad. Everything i tried was in vain. Nothing worked. Now i have others in the race. It’s got to be me or the Engineering who should find a way out…. But if others find, that is also fine.

Why?! Why is it that at everyturn a new obstacle arises……