Charles Olsen, Rothgar and David Foley published another episode of the mintCast podcast. Happy listening everyone!
In this episode:
- The News (Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox release, Linux Mint 6 KDE release, Linux needs critics)
- Rothgar: Presto, Portable Ubuntu, User interview Part 2
- David Foley: How I came to Linux, Overview of Virtualbox
- Linux Format Magazine
- Website of the week: Linux Online
- User feedback
Direct links:
“Cead Mille Failte Rot” David. In Mint 7 we’re pinning the “virtualbox” package to point to the closed-source edition of Virtualbox 2.2. We also included it in the list of “featured applications” which now comes within mintInstall. This should encourage more people to install it and have a better experience with it.
Virtualbox is an excellent virtualization application. Seamless mode is really handy. The only thing I miss compared to VMware is Bridge networking, USB support (which is there but doesn’t work as well), Video/Screenshot capture.
Rothgar: Advertising would definitely help but it has a cost. I guess Ubuntu’s early success is partly thanks to their excellent Shipit programme and I hope one day we’ll be in a position to do something similar.
Very good explanation on the level 3 updates. Ideally we would test every single update and move them to either level 2 or level 4 depending on the test result. Unfortunately we’re a very small team and our focus is often put elsewhere so you’re left with most updates marked as “should be OK”. The system is working fine and our classification is quite useful, we just need to put more resources into testing each update and marking them as safe or unsafe. To be realistic this is only going to happen when we start having paid staff working full time on the distribution.
About USB-support in the closed version of vbox i’ve gotten it to work on all ubuntu-based distros i’ve used by following this guide (that is ubuntu 8.04 and mint 5 & 6);
http://howto.landure.fr/gnu-linux/ubuntu-feisty-fawn-1/software-for-ubuntu-feisty-fawn/virtualbox-on-ubuntu-feisty-fawn
I still use windows to connect to my mobile phone for syncing, and my laptops built in bluetooth is connected via usb. I still also use winamp as my default media player running in vbox as theres no way to export play counts etc to a linux media player, and sync it to my ipod also via vbox’s usb-support.
I have never used the closed version of vbox. USB work fine for me except that my scanner is not available to linux side when running vbox.
I sync my phone to gmail calendar and contacts which syncs to evolution.
I’ve been running VirtualBox in Mint for almost a year now, mostly to run Win2000 for CorelDraw 10.
USB devices work fine in VBox – 2 scanners, 1 printer, 1 external hard drive, assorted memory cards and sticks. It is necessary to jump through a few hoops to get USB support enabled, but instructions are easy to find with Google.
I use Ed Hamrick’s VueScan (Windows version in Windows in VBox, Linux version in Mint) with both scanners (Epson flatbed, Canon film).