Installing/Creating Ubuntu Linux in Windows using VMware Image

Use cases :

• You are a Windows user who want to experiment with Linux desktop version.
• You have used Linux in past and love some of tools/utilities on Linux.You can have a virtual Linux environment.
• You are domainer and do a lot of whois query possibly automated using shell scripting,but prefer Windows as primary OS.
• You love perl scripting and want to enhance your skill on perl or shell scripting.
• You want safe virus free environment for browsing.
• There can be number of user case where although you need Primary desktop on Windows but want to have access to Linux as well.

Solutions

• You can have more than one machine one for Windows one for Linux.
• You can have have dual boot machine. Problem with dual boot is you have to decide at boot time which operating system you want to use.
• Third option is running Windows as primary OS and using a virtual machine to run Linux.Virtual machine solutions come from a few companies,however most popular solution is from VMware.

Proposed Solution

• Install Vmware player from VMWare and use existing Virtual appliance based on Ubuntu.

Steps

• Go to Vmware and download VMWare player for Windows.You will have to register with Vmware for that. https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=player&lp=default . Installation is pretty standard as any Windows install.You will have to login as an account which has administrative privilege on your Windows machine.
• Next download VMware virtual appliance/image from a location.I used http://chrysaor.info/?page=images&filter=Ubuntu . Chrysaor.info maintains up to date VMWare images of Ubuntu. Choose latest one, while writing this blog version Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop VMware image is latest. Download size is 1.1 Gb and download is via torrent. So you will need a torrent client.
• Downloaded file is in tgz format.You will need an unzip utility to unzip this file,7-zip does the work.You should have at least 8 Gb of space free to download the zip and unzip it.Once you unzip downloaded file it will create a tar file (file with .tar extension).You will again have to use 7-zip to untar it in some folder.Once files are untared you may delete .tar file to save space.
• Now start VMware player and choose “open a virtual machine” and browse to the location where you have extracted the file.Choose ubuntu1004desktop.vmx file and open it.
• You may customize memory etc.by default it the image allocates 500 Mb of RAM.
• Once you added the Ubuntu image to VMware player you may change memory allocation etc using edit virtual machine settings.
• You are all done, now you need to start Ubuntu 10.x desktop as guest OS on Windows.Click on Virtual machine just added  and then click “play virtual machine”.
• When you start virtual machine it may prompt you to download “vmware tools for linux”, you may choose “remind me later”.
• Now Ubuntu 10.x is booting,after a few seconds it will stop at login page, a user is displayed with user name “user”.Password for user “user” is “chrysaor.info”.You may change the password after you login.root user password is not set,once you login you terminal to set root password using command “sudo passwd root”.Alternatively, you may use sudo command to perform actions as root.

In case,you you face any difficulty post in comments.

Extracting unzip gzip tar bzip tgz etc on Windows using 7 zip

If you use Windows you must be aware of Winzip utility.Winzip is not free and after evaluation version it forces you to wait for sometime before you may use it. Also, Winzip doesn’t  support all type of encrypted files zipped on Unix platform. There are cases where one have to Unzip files on Windows compressed on Unix system.Unix system typically uses tar,bzip2,gzip,tgz format to zip files.
7-zip is free open source alternative which supports files even compressed on Unix system.7-zip provides command line interface as well as GUI based File manager.7-zip supports packing/unpacking of 7z,zip,gzip,bzip2 and tar files.7-zip also support unpacking only of arj,cam,chm,cpio,deb,dmg,hfs,iso,lzh,lzma,msi,nsis,rar,rpm,udf,wim,xar and z files.
I am using 7-zip and I am very happy with this.Please share your experience.You may download 7-zip from http://www.7-zip.org/ website.

35$ Laptop Video at You Tube

Video of 35$ Laptop which was reported in last post .

Another Video

Report says 2 GB RAM.Its actually 2 GB Flash.

India unveils 1500 Rs - 30$ Laptop (notebook)-Picture

You might have heard about 100$ laptop project.They call it one laptop per child.India has come up with its own lower cost solution.Indian HRD minister unveiled a low cost access cum computing device. The price of device expected to be around 1500 Rs. (30-35$).This will be available to students through educational institutions by 2011.

The device runs on Linux and it won’t have hard drive but flash as storage.Device is expected to support

• Video web conferencing facility
• multimedia content viewer like  jpeg,.pdf,.png
• Zip unzip utility
• Internet browser with flash plug-in and javascript support
• Productivity suite and computational software such as Open office,Scilab
• Wireless communication I assume wifi driver
• Remote device management capability
• It says cloud computing option,I assume it means ability to work as cloud computing client.(Browser?)
• Multimedia input-output interface

Government has setup under National Mission on Education through Information and Technology (NMEICT) to provide connectivity in Universities and colleges.They are also creating high quality educational web based and video content.This access device will help them to leverage this.

My thoughts:As cloud computing is growing with fast pace a connected access device will be more than enough to provide productivity suite to students.Also, as a few million student will start using Linux  in their college days thanks to this device,adoption of Linux will go more mainstream in India in coming year.As for students who will pass out from these institutions can work with Cloud and Linux access, device a bad thing for Microsoft (?).

Also, India should be part of 100$ laptop project.As they are open for ideas to globally reduce cost of computing for students.

Sources

Low Cost access –Cum-Computing Device Unveiled by Shri Kapil Sibal