Arthur Fuller
fuller.artful at gmail.com
Fri Sep 25 10:37:49 CDT 2009
Although I have made everything work satisfactorily, I still am mystified and concerned that things are inverted. It seems that I must run a basic OS, whether Ubuntu or XP or Windows Server, and then run VirtualBox inside this OS. This seems to be fundamentally backwards: the first thing that boots ought to be a minimal OS + VirtualBox or any similar VM manager: the lowest level ought to be just that -- no applications at all, save the VM manager, thus preserving the max RAM for the VMs. Given such a layout, I could then create a dozen VMs and stuff only the apps of interest into each of them, e.g. Vista in one, XP in another, Ubuntu in another, etc. This is pretty much what I do anyway, despite the overhead of the first OS, but I currently live with it (and also with my impecuniousness -- would love to cram 8GB in this sucker!). Ah well, another day.... Meanwhile, learning Mandarin an hour a day is going very well. Thanks to my instructors (a married couple who live in the building) I am learning pretty rapidly, and improving their English significantly too. They have a program that is a Mandarin-English dictionary of sorts, but much more. I forgot to ask for the URL today, but it's a free download and it should help me even more. To keep this vaguely on topic, i.e. programming languages, the differences between languages can be striking. APL for example has language constructs that are at best extremely difficult to translate into a language such as C#, VB.NET, etc.: matrix multiplication is expressed with a couple of characters in APL and numerous lines of code in any of the others mentioned. Speaking of which, Dr. Dobbs used to have an annual contest for C-obfuscation: write a chunk of working C that runs successfully and delivers the desired result, but is challenging to comprehend. Maybe we should launch similar contests at DatabaseAvisors.com. Could be fun. A. On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Max Wanadoo <max.wanadoo at gmail.com> wrote: > aaahhh. Guest Editions sounds good. Thanks for that. > I too have an HP Pavilian, but the slim version. > I saw today that they had discontinued it and I am a bit peeved at > that as I have only had it a couple of months. > max > > > On 25/09/2009, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com> wrote: > > None that I can think of, other than to make sure you've got plenty of > space > > available to store the VBs. Another consideration is 32- v. 64-bit. My HP > > Pavilion a1450n has an AMD duo core and I run Windows Server 64-bit on > it. I > > kicked it up to 4GB of RAM, and that really helps a lot. You can do fine > in > > 32-bit but you have to stop at 3GB of RAM if you go that way. Also, make > > sure that you install the Guest Additions on each VM that you create. (To > do > > so, on the menu of the VM itself, select Machines, then Install Guest > > Additions.) This gives you a bunch of cool features not available > otherwise, > > such as copy-paste between VMs or the host, ability to expand the VM > window > > size, etc.) > > A. > > > > On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Max Wanadoo <max.wanadoo at gmail.com> > wrote: > > > >> Wow. Impressive. I am going to install VB this weekend. > >> > >> Are there any special "precautions" I need take Arthur? > >> > >> Max > >> > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > dba-Tech mailing list > > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-Tech mailing list > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >