next »

Why?

Just found VirtualBox from Sun and it appears to be a free/open source version of VMWare. If you're not familiar with VMWare it is software (commercial) that allows you to run other operating systems in a "box" or virtual machine (VM, get it?).

I have a new (couple weeks old now) install of Ubuntu Linux on a computer and have the current version of wine on it. Seems to work ok with FreeSCAN but it doesn't work with bctool or ANY of my radio control programs for the amatuer stuff! If I'm going "off windows"(tm) <g> this just can't be!

At the moment, I'm installing Windows XP in a VM and hoping that this will allow some of the "essential" programs to work on this new platform. I've heard good things about VMWare, but really can't justify the cost so taking this avenue of approach.

BTW - did you notice earlier that I said FreeSCAN appears to work on Linux? Yep, straight out of the box and the only thing I had to do (for wine and others that need the serial interface) was to make a link (think shortcut) to the serial device mapping that linux sets up.

Will update you all (USA, ok, SOUTHERN USA talk) when I know more about all of this.

Tom

And it works!

Got the XP installed - thought I was doing it on a real computer. <g>

Did have a bit of an issue with the serial port - wasn't there. Found that you need to make a link and then start the VM up and "add hardware" so that Windows knows about it. Once that was done, the programs in the VM ran much like they do on a real windows computer. Got FreeSCAN and bctool both working and will be trying the Yaesu stuff tonight or this weekend.

I've spent some time now reading the manual (yes, I know, after the fact <g>) but it appears that this is quite a flexible system and "well worth the price paid". <wide grin>

If you have a need for a virtual machine type approach, highly recommended that you take a look at this.

VirtualBox also lets you take "snapshots" of your VM. Say you're getting ready to do something you're not sure will work OR want a quick/easy way to back out...take a snapshot, then you can easily revert to your saved point (snapshot) and no harm, no foul.

And I will also add that I was pretty impressed with the speed of the VM, didn't really seem that I was working with a VM (M$ version of this is VERY noticable in its slowness).

Thanks for listening.

Tom

Thanks for the report, Tom. Can you give me an idea of the specs on the machine running virtual box? Just wondering if a p3 with 512 megs of ram is enough. I've been learning the bct15 this week. Got freescan running in Wine, just wondering about possibiities for other Windows only scaner programs.
Jim

The one I tried it on was the one I had handy at the time (my workhorse crashed and I had to gen a new one quickly <g>). Got a 2gig dual core motherboard with 2g of memory and a 500 g hard drive - all told, was just shy of $300 do it certainly is NOT state of the art. Nice machine, but could have been a whole lot more beef to it.

Haven't tried virtualbox on any of my other (lesser) machines but I'm sure they would be slower.

If it were me, I'd load it and see how it does. If you don't like it, wipe it out and do something else. Sometimes you just have to have "REAL" windows.

BTW - I did get all my ham radio programs running under it when they would NOT run under wine. And it's MUCH cheaper than VM Ware. <g>

Tom

Tom, details on how you got this to work under Linux are really badly needed in our wiki. The more details you can add, the better. I will construct a stub so you can edit it.

73 Mike