Virtualbox + xfce

Virtualbox runs Ubuntu very well, especially with Guest Additions installed.

However, one thing that won’t work on it is Compiz. This is because Compiz cannot support the graphics card from Virtualbox.
This means that if you want any sort of desktop effects, you can’t use Compiz, Beryl, or Compiz-fusion.

However, if you only need basic desktop effects, there is a workaround–xfce.

xfce is a lightweight desktop environment that is designed with older or less powerful hardware in mind.

For Ubuntu, the easiest way to install xfce is to go into Synaptics Package Manager, search for xfce, and install the main xfce package from there.

After you do so, log out.  When your login screen appears, click “sessions” and select the “xfce” option.  Log in as normal.

When you finish logging in and xfce finishes loading, right-click the desktop, go to the “Settings” menu, and click “Settings Manager”.  You will then be presented with a grid of options.

To enable desktop composition, click on “Window Manager Tweaks”.  Click on the “Compositor” tab.  Check the box that says “Enable display compositing”.  You can then play around with its options, like making inactive windows translucent, etc.

You can also play around with the other options in the Settings Manager.

Why would you want a compositor besides having some shadows and transparency?

A compositor is often a dependency for many eye candy things.

For example, Avant Window Navigator (AWN), which is a dock (in the style of the Mac OS X one), requires a compositor to work.  AWN can do stacks, reflections, and a whole lot of cool stuff.

Here is a screenshot of my computer.  You can roll up a window to show only its title bar, add transparency to inactive windows, change your theme (I’m using a Mac-like one), arrange the titlebar buttons, make windows snap to each other, and do lots of other cool things.  The screenshot also has a heavily customized AWN bar.

Click for the full size screenshot.

Running Linux on a Windows PC without rebooting

a.k.a. “virtualization”

Look it up on wikipedia.

Instead of installing Linux on an old PC, it is possible to run Linux on Windows.

So, there are two major names out there, and a minor one that I really like (and use).

The first one is VMware. VMware is a company that makes proprietary (read: non-open-source) virtualization software. Two of them are free; the rest are aimed at “enterprises”. The first free one is VMware Player. It’s simple to use. You can’t make virtual machines. In other words, you have to download them. However, there are places that let you make virtual machines. The second free software offering from VMware is VMware Server. This is more complicated, but lets you make virtual machines. I would like to note that VMware does make some modifications to your “my network places” or equivalent.

The second major name is QEMU. It is open source. It works well, and is very simple to use. However, it does not have full support for Windows machines as hosts. I have had problems with this running virtual machines. This is highly configurable, and can achieve some of the functionality of the software I’m going to mention next.

My favorite one is innotek VirtualBox. It comes as open source, though there are some addons (which I REALLY like) that are proprietary. All of this is free, though. Unless you’re one of those Debian types who only uses open-source software, I would recommend downloading the one that’s not “Open Source Edition (OSE)”. (A binary is just a program that’s compiled and ready for you to use). If you’re running it on Windows, make sure you download the version for Windows, not the version for the Linux distribution that you will be using. There are a few things that I really like about VirtualBox:

• It supports using a virtual hard disk. This means that you can install Linux onto a virtual hard drive and not have to “run” it off a .iso file.
• Using “Guest Additions” (available for Linux), you don’t have to have the mouse trapping thing. You can also have shared folders and copying and pasting between the different OSes.
• The network connection goes through your computer’s connection, so you don’t have to worry about proxies and network authentication, especially if your school uses Cisco Clean Access (which is very annoying).

I would like to note that I get BSODs from this.

UPDATE: As of version 1.5.2, I no longer get BSODs from this.