Some time ago I wrote about the merits of Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007.  This time I’m going to write about Sun VirtualBox, which has an advantage over VPC:  It can run Linux distros without crashing.

A few weeks ago I tried to install Ubuntu on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and I couldn’t get it to work.  It always crashed during the installation, throwing random glitchy garbage all over the (virtual) screen.

This time, after some Googling, I found these other free virtualization products QEMU and VirtualBox which allegedly worked hosting Linux.  I picked VirtualBox simply because it had the Sun name behind it.  So far it works pretty well.

Ubuntu 8.10 is shown above running rather snappily in a 256mb VirtualBox – way faster than Vista would in Virtual PC, that’s for sure.

Side rant:  One thing that bugs me about alternative operating systems is their never-ending obsession with cloning the exact look and feel of Windows.  I remember this kind of thing beginning way back in my Amiga days when everyone started trying to add “Start” buttons to the Amiga Workbench.  What exactly is the point of switching to Linux if it looks and runs exactly the same as Windows?  I personally think it’s about time to blow up the overlapping-windows UI model and start afresh.

But anyway, installing Ubuntu was a breeze.  I just downloaded an ISO, mounted it in VirtualBox, and away it went.  Now that I know it can be done, I’ll start hunting around for some other distros.  Ubuntu is nice and I applaud them for bringing much-needed UI consistency to Linux, but, as I said above, it tries to clone Windows, and, well, Windows already does Windows about as good as you’re going to get.  I’m looking to experiment with something, you know, different.