Teknovis

I have a friend who is a huge fan of all things coming from the template of Ikea :) (I am slowly trying to get her to become an Ubuntu fan also :) )

Anyway, she knows of my interest in all things computer related, so she sent me a link to an article describing how to convert a piece of Ikea furniture into a Linux cluster: What’s with Helmer, the 24 core Linux cluster?.

Actually, the Ikea Hacker blog is pretty interesting :o

Tags: Ubuntu

I needed to edit a photo on somebody’s computer today. I needed to crop the photo, and then sharpen it. Unfortunately, there was no software installed on the computer that would do it :(

I previously wrote about an online photo editor called Pixenate in Online Photo Editor. Unfortunatly, it is not able to sharpen photos :(

So I did a search, and I found Pixlr. It is really slick, and it appears to be very functional!

Tags: Pixenate, Pixlr

I was going mad today trying to select a non-contiguous range in Microsoft Excel until I came across this tip:

Any range can be non-contiguous. All you do is, as you are selecting cells with the mouse, hold the Control key down. You will be able to select as many disjoint blocks of cells on one sheet as you like. All Excel ranges can only be on one sheet, so your non-contiguous blocks cannot be on separate sheets, and cannot span sheets.

It is taken from Excel’s Non-Contiguous Ranges.

Tags: Microsoft

I came across three interesting settings for my tabs in Firefox today:

• In previous versions new tabs were always added to the right hand side of the tab bar. I found this very useful, because if I read my tabs from left to right it was a sort of First-In, First-Out queue. However, I could not understand why the new tab location seemed to be a bit random in the latest version :| After some searching I found Why to embrace Firefox 3.6’s new-tab ethos, which explains the logic bethind the new tab location :o After reading this I decided to try it for a while longer, and at least I now know how to change this behaviour if I change my mind!
• You can enable a very nice graphical tab switcher as described in Enable Visual Tab Switcher in Firefox 3.6.
• You can enable thumbnail previews of tabs in Windows 7 as described in Unlock thumbnail previews for Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7.

Enjoy!

Tags: Firefox, Windows 7

I updated my installation of VirtualBox to version 3.2.6 today. It was very straight-forward, and I have not noticed any differences yet.

I was also prompted to update my Guest Additions.

Tags: VirtualBox

I have been installing and configuring Firefox a lot of times this week! It is becoming a bit repetitive!

I think that nearly all of the default settings are perfect, and I just change a few of them. Probably the most important of these is that I add more accept languages.

I then install the following add-ons and plugins:

• A nice theme (and I modify the toolbars)
• Additional dictionaries
• Adobe Flash Player

Lastly, I make the following changes to the configuration file (See About:config for instructions on doing this):

• Remove the close button from the tab (see tip 7 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)
• Change the URL text so that it becomes clickable on all operating systems (see tip 15 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)
• Change URL search behaviour so that it returns the normal Google results (see Change Address Bar Search Behavior In Firefox)
• Disable large image resizing (see Stop Automatic Image Resizing)
• Enable spell-checking on all text boxes (see tip 10 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)

I can now reference this online myself :)

Tags: Adobe, Firefox, Google

Last week I finally got my new laptop! I did get a Dell, but I did not get the Studio that I was considering in Virtualising my Laptop. The laptop came with Windows 7, and for the moment I have decided to leave that as my host operating system. However, I am already hating it, but I will leave that for another blog post…

After reading the articles described in VMware Workstation Versus VirtualBox I decided to try using VirtualBox, and I installed version 3.2.4. It installed perfectly.

I then tried to create my first virtual machine. This is where I had a few problems, that I will describe here:

• I was unable to assign more than 1500MB of Memory to my virtual machine :( After some research online I discovered this is a limitation of using a 32bit host operating system :o
• I assigned my virtual machine 2 processors since my laptop is dual core. However, when I tried to start the virtual machine I got an error code (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED). It turns out that this means that the required hardware support for virtualisation is disabled in the BIOS. It was a bit tricky, because after changing this BIOS setting a hard reboot is required for it to become active – the normal soft reboot is not sufficient.
• I needed to install the Guest Additions in order to get the guest operating system to correctly identify and use my monitor resolution.

Since then everything has been working perfectly, and so far I have been very impressed!

Tags: Dell, Microsoft, VirtualBox, Windows 7

I previously described how I wanted to virtualise my laptop in Virtualising my Laptop. I have made some progress with this, but not as much as I would have liked :(

I heard some great recommendations for VirtualBox recently, so I decided to investigate it a bit further. I found the following articles the most useful:

• VMware vs. VirtualBox Part 2 is very recent, and it provides a very good performance comparison. (The original, but now out-dated article is VMware vs. VirtualBox.)
• Is it a Real Box or is it VirtualBox? provides a performance overview of the latest version of VirtualBox.
• Both VirtualBox 3.0.4 vs. VMware Workstation 6.5.3 and VirtualBox 3.1.2 vs VMware Player 3.0 (First Class Flyer) provide objective and subjective comparisons.

I think that all of this is enough to convince me that VirtualBox is a real contender! The next step is to download it and try it myself :)

I also did some reading about how the virtual machine software handles multiple cores and Hyper-threading. It appears that it is able to distinguish between them, and it will always allocate cores before a Hyper-threaded unit. I understand this from reading the following two documents:

• Performance Tuning and Benchmarking Guidelines for VMware Workstation 6
• HyperThreading Support in VMware ESX Server 2

This weekend I also downloaded Ubuntu 10.04, although I have not had time to try it yet.

Tags: Ubuntu, VirtualBox, VMware

I read this great article about Microsoft PowerPoint: We have met the enemy, and he is PowerPoint.

The direct link to the slide mentioned in the article is Afghanistan Stability/COIN Dynamics.

I think that it is priceless!

Tags: Microsoft

I want to buy a new laptop for myself. I need it! My old one is too big and heavy, the screen is losing its contrast, and the battery lasts for approximately 30 seconds :(

In the past I tended to buy high-end laptops on the basis that they would last for longer. This worked to a certain extent, but this time I want to try a new approach. I am going to buy a relatively low-end laptop, but replace it more frequently. The disadvantage of this approach is that it is very time consuming to setup a new computer.

Last year I started experimenting with using Ubuntu within VMware as my main desktop operating system on and old computer. I was very impressed with its speed and stability. So I have decided that I am going to virtualise my entire desktop on the new laptop. The advantages of this approach are:

• Moving my computer from one piece of hardware to another becomes trivial. This is useful for when I want to upgrade my laptop in the future. It also means that I can put my computer onto an external hard disk.
• Backing-up my computer also becomes trivial. I am thinking about backing it up automatically every night!
• Snapshots can be taken before I install any software on a test basis. I can then roll-back my computer if I do not like the new software.
• It provides my computer with a lot of extra security from network based attacks.

My overall requirements for my new laptop are that it supports three different virtual machines:

• I want to start using the Ubuntu based virtual machine as my main computer. I am waiting for Lucid Lynx 10.4 LTS.
• I am currently using Windows 2000 as main my operating system. I think it is great ;)
• Unfortunately, I have one program that I need to use regularly, and this program requires Windows XP (or later) :(

I will use NAT to network all three virtual machines most of the time. However, sometimes I will need to use the Windows 2000 virtual machine in bridged mode so that it can be a first class member of my domain.

Therefore, the overall architecture of what I am trying to achieve should look like this:

Now that I know what I want to achieve, I just need to find the best way to realise this!

Hardware

I am currently considering buying either a Dell Inspiron 1545, Inspiron 15 Intel Core i, or a Studio 15. I am a Dell fan, and a 15″ screen is the best size for me. I will get 4GB of RAM, and either a 350GB or a 500GB hard disk.

I will get one of the cheapest processors available. I am currently considering either the Intel Pentium Dual-Core Processor T4400 or the Intel Core i3-330M. I will probably choose the latter, because it seems to have better support for virtualisation because it supports VT-x according to its specification. In practice I do not know if this will provide a noticeable benefit.

In terms of form-factor, I dislike the idea of a number keypad on a laptop. Therefore, I will probably go for a Studio 15.

I am going to have to buy an external card reader, because none of these laptops support Compact Flash cards :( My cameras all use Compact Flash :o

I wonder how the host operating systems sees the integrated web camera. I hope that it appears as a standard USB device, so that it can easily be shared with the virtual machines.

Host Operating System

My requirements for the host operating system are:

• It must be very secure, because I will use my laptop in a lot of public networks.
• It must be easy to connect to file servers. This is important, because I will need to back-up my virtual machines.
• It must have a software based firewall that is very easy to configure precisely.

I think that the clear winner here is Ubuntu with Firestarter. If my Linux skills were better I would use Debian instead :o

The only question I have is whether I should use the 32bit or the 64bit version of Ubuntu?

Virtual Machine Software

The two options that I am considering for this are VMware Workstation and VirtualBox. My main requirements are that the virtual machine software is secure, and that it supports VT-x. I think that both do!

However, there are still some issues that I have not resolved:

• Should I use the 32bit version or the 64bit version?
• Which offers better performance?
• Will they both support my hardware equally well?
• Is there a risk of becoming locked into one of these products?
• How is Hyper-threading supported? Presumably, the virtual machine software would think that it has four cores to distribute to the virtual machines. However, in reality it would only have two. This makes me think that I should disable Hyper-threading.
• Does the virtual machine file format change with each new release of the virtual machine software?

Cost is not really an issue here.

Guest Operating Systems

As I wrote above, I will use Ubuntu, Windows 2000, and Windows XP on my virtual machines.

My questions relating to the guest operating systems are:

• Should I choose the 32bit or the 64bit version of Ubuntu?
• Will the OEM version of Windows XP that I got with a previous Dell computer install into a virtual machine without lots of registration issues?

If anybody has any opinions, experience, advice, or answers relating to any of this then I would love to read them!

Thanks!

Tags: Debian, Dell, Firestarter, Firewall, Microsoft, Ubuntu, VirtualBox, VMware, Windows 2000, Windows XP