Linux Live CDs have long been well known as a handy tool in PC repair. Personally I’ve used Linux CDs dozens of times to repair Windows problems, from virus scans to file retrieval to partition adjustments. As great as Live CDs are, they still have a few drawbacks, like an inability to save any new files or changes. Bootable USB sticks solve most of the problems with Live CDs. You can write to them, change the software or the whole system without burning a new CD, and carry them easily wherever you go.

There’s a new (Windows only, strangely enough) software tool out called LiLi USB Creator. LiLi makes it incredibly easy to create your own customized bootable Linux system on a USB stick, and even run it from within Windows using an portable copy of Virtualbox that’s included on the installation. Impressed? I am.

Virtualbox is an excellent application to have if you’re looking to try out new operating systems and/or are generally interested in virtualisation for the many benefits it offers.

Make Tech Easier has extensively covered VirtualBox a couple of times earlier and we are great fans of this cross platform, open source application.

One thing which VirtualBox was missing till some time back was support for 3D acceleration for guest operating systems. What this means is that the graphics driver used inside the guest virtual machines was only capable of simple 2D graphics and thus interfaces like Compiz on Linux and Aero on Vista were not useable.

There was basic 3D support for Windows guests in Virtualbox 2.1 but users using Virtualbox to run Linux guests were mostly confined to the 2D graphics driver. That has changed with the release of VirtualBox 2.2 recently and VirtualBox now supports 3D acceleration. The 3D acceleration support built in VirtualBox uses your native machine’s graphics hardware to provide this capability, so if your native graphics driver doesn’t have 3D capability, VirtualBox cannot make use of it.

While using Virtualbox, one thing that I have found is that the size of the VM (a file with .VDI extension) expands over time. If you have selected the “Dynamically Expanding Storage” option when first creating the VM, you will find that the file size expands whenever you install new applications in the VM. That is perfectly normal. However, when you uninstall or delete applications in the VM, the file size does not shrink or return to its previous size. That is to say, if you are constantly installing and uninstalling applications in your VM, the VDI file could be taking up more space than it is actually using.

If you have a great deal of hard disk space to spare, you can simply ignore this. However, if you find yourself always running short of hard disk space, you might want to consider shrinking the VM and free up unused disk space.

This tutorial will go through the steps to shrink your Virtualbox VM.

If you have installed Ubuntu Intrepid as a virtual machine in your Virtualbox, you will find that the mouse integration does not work, even after you have installed the guest addition.

If you are having this problem, here’s the fix:

First, make sure that the guest addition is already installed inn your Ubuntu Intrepid guest.

Open a terminal, type

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and close

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “vboxmouse”
Option “CorePointer”
EndSection

Restart the computer. The mouse integration should work now.

Virtualbox released their latest version 2.1 last week. If you have not upgraded your existing copy of Virtualbox, I would advise you to do it now.

There are several new features in Virtualbox 2.1.

• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems – If you have a 64-bit processor, you can now install/run a 64-bit virtual machine on a 32-bit host. For those who wanted to test out software compatibility on a 64-bit OS, this is the best way for you to do so.
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL – If you have a graphics card that can support OpenGL, your Virtualbox VM can now make use of your accelerated 3D hardware to run 3D graphics. Potentially, you would be able to play 3D game on your VM. This means that Linux users will be able to play 3D Windows game on a Windows guest without having to dual-boot Linux and Windows. Currently, this 3D acceleration feature is only supported in Windows XP or 32-bit Vista guest.
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots – Virtualbox 2.1 is able to support VMDK and VHD virtual hard disk format. This means that you can now use your VMware hard disk or Microsoft VirtualPC hard disk in Virtualbox without any need for conversion.
• Easier implementation of Host Interface networking – In the past, implementing Host Interface networking requires you to install and configure TUN/TAP. With this new feature, you can easily configure your VM networking to pass through the host interface rather than NAT. By using the host interface, your VM will appear to the host as a network drive connected via a network cable. You can then set up a file server and share files easily between the guest and host.

For some of you who have setup Windows Vista as the guest VM in your Ubuntu Virtualbox, you might have some difficulties in getting the Vista guest to access the shared folder in your Ubuntu host. If you are having this problem, here is the way to mount the shared folder on your Vista guest.

While creating a virtual machine in Virtualbox is an easy task, sharing the virtual machine across different OS is not. If you are dual-booting your computer and have created a virtual machine in one of the OS partition, due to the difference in file structure among the different OS, you will not be able to access and open the VM file in the other partition.

Ever since I started using Ubuntu two years back, I have been an avid user of VMware server. It fascinated me to a great extent that I could actually run an OS inside an OS. Recently, I tried out VirtualBox, another virtualization software like VMware server, and I was greatly impressed by it. Even though I love VMware server, I can’t deny the fact that VirtualBox actually runs faster and smoother, with less crashes. Here is my top 5 reasons why VirtualBox is better than VMware server.

VirtualBox is an open-source cross platforms virtualization application that allows anyone to create a virtual machine on their computer. It is similar to the popular VMware, but much smaller in size and handles the virtual machine more efficiently.

Before you attempt to install any Windows OS as a virtual machine, make sure that your computer has enough memory (at least 1GB of RAM) and hard disk and you own a genuine Windows installer CD with valid license key.