Sunday 14 September 2008

VirtualBox in Ubuntu

I use Ubuntu as an alternate operating system at home in place of Windows XP. I started using it extensively since the release of Fiesty Fawn, which is a year and a half back. It is installed on my external hard disk (WD Passport). Ubuntu is an operating system based on Linux, which is free and the community help pages are more than adequate to help a novice or an intermediate user. I managed to get help whenever I got myself into sticky situations. The most recent one was to do with the Network Manager, about which I'll write in a future post.

Following the release of Google Chrome (newest entrant to web browser market) earlier this month I wanted to install it on Ubuntu, but was disappointed that a Linux version is not available. I got to know that it could only be done using Wine, a Windows Emulator on Linux. My experience with Wine isn't that great till date because of its inability to provide the full functionality of a windows software (like iTunes, Winamp, Realplayer etc.) on Linux.

Scouring through the Google results I came across a website which showed how to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu using VirtualBox. Wow! I thought, a virtualisation software, where I could run software built for windows (which do not have a Linux equivalent) without having to leave Ubuntu. I loaded my virtual version of Windows using Virtual Box following the instructions on the above website. I then installed Google Chrome and voila. Here I am using Google Chrome browser to access my blog and write this post without having to leave Ubuntu.

I could have done the same dozen other ways, but I chose to do it this way.

Using VirtualBox I can run the fully featured Real Player, Windows Media Player and also Winamp. I will download iTunes some other time and am sure it will work just fine.

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