Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Ubuntu and Virtualbox

Is there virtual machine software that plays nicely with dual monitors?

aloysius on the mixing boards — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:58:24 -0800

Is there virtual machine software that plays nicely with dual monitors? Linux (Ubuntu) guest. Windows 7 host. I'm using VirtualBox now, but I can only use one monitor. And I can't expand the size of the window to be larger than the size of one screen.

I tried VMware Player, but it was really slow. So I gave up. I'm not sure it would do what I want anyhow.

Has anyone had any success using dual monitors with a VM Linux guest?

Windows 7 on virtual machine in/beside Ubuntu 10.04 to watch streaming Netflix - will it work?

dilettanti — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:18:41 -0800

Windows 7 on virtual machine in/beside Ubuntu 10.04 to watch streaming Netflix - will it work? And will it work well? Will I be able to watch Netflix streaming movies (preferably in HD) on a Windows 7 guest system running inside VirtualBox OSE on an Ubuntu 10.04 host? Google has turned up very little recent chatter, with one or two people saying that it doesn't work well. Anyone here manage to get it working? My wife and I would like to get rid of cable (or at least reduce our subscription), and I suggested that with the right tools, we could substitute Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other on-line resources for the cable subscription. My initial inclination was to purchase a PS3 and use it as a media renderer and streaming box (we have a home NAS right now), but I also wanted to make my files available securely over the internet, and was thinking I could also reduce my VPS hosting costs if I built a home server instead. So I am building a new machine to act as an always-on or wake-on-LAN file server, web server, and HTPC (in the long term I'd like more than one machine to separate functions, but it's not an option now).

Because I intend to have the file and web servers always on (or wake-on-access-of-some-sort), I thought that it would be best to have a single operating system always running, and was looking to Ubuntu 10.04 (from which I could also run MythTV or Boxee). As far as I can tell, though, I will have to have a Windows installation to access Netflix streaming. But I am much more familiar and comfortable with running a file server and web server from a linux box. So I am hoping that I can run Windows as a VirtualBox or other hypervisor guest, and stream Netflix through the virtualized Windows system. Will this work? There doesn't seem to be much on the web with respect to doing this with recent versions of the relevant software. [Although it does look like I cannot use XEN to pass through my video card because I don't have the right chipset.] Does anyone have experience getting Netflix to stream well to a virtualized Windows (preferably Win7) environment?

Alternatively, I could (1) do a dual-boot system, and just not have access to the file or web servers while we are using the Windows install for Netflix (or possibly Blu-ray down the line), or (2) just use Windows, with it running a file share and web server in the background all the time. But if I can have the main system running Ubuntu/linux full time, I would greatly prefer that. Thanks!

System specs:
Case: Antec Three Hundred ATX
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W
MoBo: GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX
GPU: Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250
CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz
Memory: OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600
TV Tuner: None yet

I would also welcome suggestions on TV Tuners or IR/RF receivers, preferably that would work with a Logitech Harmony remote.

Catching that Intrepid Ibex

photomusic86 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:57:21 -0800

How can I use Ubuntu (running as a virual machine on VirtualBox with OSX 10.5) to improve my computing experience? After some initial problems, I finally got VirtualBox to run Ubuntu 8.10, which is cool, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Born and raised on a Mac since OS 7, I'm not used to Linux, or even Windows (which I might run at a later date). Why should I use Ubuntu, and what for?

Teach me about Linux VM choices.

fogster — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:28:11 -0800

VMFilter: Talk to me about virtual machines on Ubuntu. I am running Feisty. My processor supports hardware virtualization. I'd like to run WinXP and/or Vista from within Linux, and possibly experiment with other Linux setups.

I'm overwhelmed by choices. I used vmware many moons ago, but it now seems silly to emulate an x86 processor when I'm on an x86 processor, especially when I don't have to. Xen is one of the things I've heard of supporting hardware virtualization, but it seems like a decent amount of work to get it running. But it seems like I'm overlooking a lot of others. There's virtualbox, but I don't quite get that. And I keep seeing references to kvm. Is that out? Stable?

I don't want to dual-boot. I want to run Windows within a VM inside of Linux.

I'd strongly prefer a free solution. What are my options? What would you choose? What do you use now? (Bonus points if the solution lets me run an application on my desktop, Coherence (I think?) style, as opposed to forcing me to use a whole desktop inside a window... But this isn't a dealbreaker.)