What's in my VirtualBox List? 4

Posted by JD 03/03/2012 at 04:00

For desktop, I use Ubuntu Server 10.04 x32 LTS with LXDE loaded – I’m lazy. No GPU accel is enabled.

For limited desktop, I use TinyCore.

For Server I’m mostly running Ubuntu Server x64 8.04 LTS, but have a few Ubuntu 10.04 x64 LTS and Debian and CentOS and lots of specialized distros for specific requirements or due to hardware limitations. Come May, I’ll load up Ubuntu Server 12.04 and begin migrating apps from the 8.04 LTS instances over. That will also switch from Xen to LXC or KVM virtualization.

Laptop VirtualBox Play Area

Inside VirtualBox, I have these different ISOs or Virtual Machines:

  • Ubuntu desktop 11.10 – I had to look. Done now.
  • Slitaz – meh – weird package manager
  • Openfiler – didn’t like my hardware
  • ipcop – still using this
  • pfSense – didn’t like my hardware
  • smoothwall-express – left me with a bad taste and I don’t recall why
  • Puppy-Lucid ready for loading on USB flash drives.
  • linuxmint-11 – interesting
  • Deb6 – my next server
  • Ubuntu Srv 11.10
  • BT5 – self explanatory.
  • lubuntu-10.10 – I had to look. Done now.
  • lubuntu-11.04 – I had to look. Done now.
  • dban – ready for loading on USB flash drives.
  • android-x86 – less than useful to me. Interesting once.
  • Joli-OS – completely worthless; I don’t get it at all.
  • meego-netbook – I have a Nokia N800
  • TinyCore ready for loading on USB flash drives when not used for banking websites.
  • WinXP Pro – sometimes there is no substitute.
  • a few gparted and system-rescue ISOs too.

The Future VMs

I need to wipe a few of those and load up Ubuntu Server 12.04 beta. VM sprawl is real. I’m interested in the LXC and KVM support. I really like having the ubuntu repos and access to PPAs for selected programs. I haven’t seen a federated way to do PPA-like thinks with RPMs.

Today I looked for data on #! Linux, CrunchBang. I spent 5 minutes on their wiki and couldn’t determine a few items so I left. Their download didn’t work with out javascript either – another reason to leave. What did I want to know?

  • How large the download was
  • Minimal HDD storage required
  • Minimal RAM required
  • Whether accelerated GPUs were needed – I’m gonna put this in a VM after all.
  • Which package manager the distro uses

I really was fairly interested to try #!, but not without those basic questions answered. Please comment if you know the answers.

I’m a Linux whore. You may notice there aren’t any RPM or strange Linux package managers in that list like whatever Arch uses. Yes, I’ve tried Arch and deleted it. I prefer APT and did my time with RPM and tgz files for 10+ years. I don’t need that anymore.

Next time, if there is interest, I’ll list my KVM and Xen VMs.

What distros are in your virtual machine list? Why?

  1. JD 03/03/2012 at 09:25

    I have tried xPud in the past. I loved it because it would load in seconds from SD card or a USB card. But the main developer left it to develop Meego. After tinkering with TinyCore Linux for a while, my interests in minimal sized OS evaporated. Right now I am mainly using Linux Mint 10. I began using it out of curiosity and it worked for me very well so it became my main VM OS. I just installed Awesome Windows Manager today and really liking it. I was at a stage where I was trying out many distros of Linux too (they are like free toys!), but now that I have a fast machine, I am not so much focused on performance anymore. Maybe if GPU acceleration is supported, I will explore around different user interfaces.

  2. netcarver 03/03/2012 at 10:40

    Hi,

    I’ve enjoyed your blog for a while so time to feed something back.

    I’m using #! on an old laptop with no accelerated GPU, I’ve also run it happily in VirtualBox and under KVM — I generally use a 3gig virtual disk for it and it seems happy with that but I’ve added very few packages into those containers.

    Initial mem usage is sub 100 megabytes in a openbox desktop configuration.

    APT is the package manager as this is a debian based distro that now comes in both 32 and 64 bit flavours, with or without backports enabled.

    Download sizes (in megabytes) are as follows…

    32 bit, no backports : 662
    32 bit, with backports : 667
    64 bit, no backports : 643
    64 bit, with backports : 653

    …taken from the #! download page with JS temporarily enabled. Maybe worth noting that I had to enable JS for your site to preview this comment.

    I find #! one of the best distros — if not, the best — I’ve used for desktop, though I’m still using Ubuntu server 10.04 for my server needs.

    HTH.

  3. Gerardo 03/10/2012 at 16:28

    I set up an SLES at work a few months back and it taught me the meaning of “RPM hell”. I’m still young and enjoy manual package management and knowing what my system has from memory. I used APT for a while when I fiddled with Ubuntu but didn’t like it. It’s too automatic. I’d prefer to make my own package manager or just continue to do everything manually. Everyone says I’ll get over this school of thought soon but I don’t see it happening.

  4. Daniel 04/03/2012 at 23:53

    I would be very interested in your listing of KVM and Xen VMs. I’m working on getting a XenServer up and running on my network.