Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today, I am building a Linux virtual machine for my mother and sister to split. Let’s get started.
Machines Within Machines
Switching operating systems is like moving to a new house. It’s intimidating. Things are arranged in different spots. The pattern of your daily life will shift and there will be an uncomfortable adjustment period.
But at least with computers, anyone with a semi-recent CPU and enough other system resources can host a “guest” operating system for evaluation. While I previously have no experience with this method, for others, it serves as a sandbox where they can try things with Linux without the pressure of learning everything at once or else risk being out a computer if a problem commands a chunk of research time.
VirtualBox
I’ve done my share of research on Virtual Machines (VM’s) in the past. VirtualBox is a well-respected name, and I can see why. Once I installed it on my sister’s Windows machine, I didn’t have to research anything about it specifically until I was looking at a desktop and my sister wanted the VM to use both screens. Otherwise, the experience was intuitive.
PopOS is quickly becoming my go-to easy mode for Linux. Their downloads come with shasum verification hashes, which I made use of. In one way, it was even easier to install because I could just install straight from the disk image without any physical install media. I did have one problem during installation where the installer window rendered larger than the screen resolution. Instead of brute forcing a virtual screen size from VirtualBox, I just used Super (Window key)+click&drag as I learned to do while working with GIMP on a boxy tube monitor with a similarly nostalgic resolution.
Dual screens had me stumped on their instruction set. From what I can tell, I had to insert a virtual CD that came with VirtualBox and install it into PopOS’s virtual disk drive. A bit of computer wizardry happened that involved some sudo password prompts that crashed and duplicates thereof happened and I seemingly needlessly rebooted the VM several times before I unlocked the necessary options to enable dual screen. I will want to pay more attention next time.
The default desktop environment for PopOS was based on GNOME 3, but it’s not for us. System76, the makers of PopOS provided an awesome command by command guide for installing a large selection of alternate desktop environments, so I loaded a few my mother and sister should feel most comfortable with. KDE is my favorite, but Cinnamon and MATE are other names I recognize.
Speaking of KDE, If Linux is the OS of customization and decision fatigue, KDE compliments it perfectly. I spent more of my blog project time this week trying to chase down the color settings than I would have liked. I was hoping for some sort of base color picker that would then populate the rest of the theme with different shades, but I found some options to pick each shade individually. Unfortunately, you’d have to be an artist to make something that looks decent. I was able to find a user-submitted theme with an acceptable color palate.
Side Project
My Manjaro workstation has been getting its Internet through a Raspberry Pi for a while now, but lately I’ve been getting periods of having the Pi’s Wi-Fi connection drop randomly. My father picked up a special gaming Wi-Fi router and I set it up today after months of other projects constantly taking priority. Long story short: I was easily able to use my laptop to connect and arrange default configurations on the router, but I have yet to get it to agree with the Pi 4. I’ve tried looking into possible inherit compatibility issues, but all the guides for finding information on Wi-Fi from Linux assume the presence of tools that aren’t present in Raspian. I thought this was small enough for a side project, but it appears I was wrong.
Takeaway
Setting up a new computer and getting it tweaked properly takes a while and a VM is no exception. One point I didn’t go into was how our NFS drive didn’t admit the VM on account of its IP address. I also learned that one of the intended host machines sits a little too heavy on its existing RAM, so it will need an upgrade for comfortable VM operation. I expect a follow up to this project at a later date.
Final Question
Do you have any tips for working with virtual machines?