Monday, January 23, 2012

Debian Wheezy in VirtualBox - Part 1

v 0.2

 This post has grown significantly since I started, so I've had to split it up ...... here goes ..

I'm a fan of Debian Linux.  Whilst Ubuntu is fine, Debian just sits right with me.  Same with Virtualbox.  I have had a Debian Squeeze virtual machine on my laptop and desktop for some time and thought I'd explore a bit further. 

One thing I did recently was to explore the concept of using a Debian VM as an encrypted volume.  Whilst there are some other means of encrypting files and partitions, I've found it is quite effective to install a Debian encrypted VM and use that.  It is quite straight-forward, as I described in an earlier post installing to an old laptop. Free and neat.

What I have been thinking of recently, though, is exploring Wheezy (Debian Testing) and the new Gnome.  I'd been hearing a few things about it that disturbed me, and I have been eager to explore a bit, since I have shown a few people Debian recently, and they love it.  Gnome in Squeeze is quite easy for them and I've been wondering how they would fare.


Wheezy Netinstall

First, how do you find an ISO to install?  Easy - search on "debian installer" and it will take you to the page from which to download a "netinstall" image.

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/

You can see from this that this is the link to the "i386" image.

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso

Now, what is a "Netinstall" iso image?  It is a Debian Installer cd image that will install a base Linux system onto your computer from which it then connects to a Debian Repository to download the remaining files to produce a complete system.  Note, you need to be connected to the Internet when you use the Netinstall image - I guess that is .. er .. why it is called "Netinstall".

Virtualbox

Given that Virtualbox is free and available for all common platforms, I've found it most useful.  I can run a copy of the same Linux VM on both my Windows desktop and my Mac Laptop. 

For those who don't know, Virtualbox started as a private, open-source project many years ago before being bought by Sun, who continued developing it, before in turn being bought by Oracle who have thankfully kept the project going.  The latest can be downloaded from http://virtualbox.org  .  You will need both the version for your platform, and the guest additions (which install into virtualbox easily).

Preparing Virtualbox for Gnome 3

I have two Wheezy VMs - one for Gnome and one for Xfce desktops, to see what is available and how best to tailor Wheezy for what I want, however I used the same recipie for both VMs.  It is pretty straight forward to prepare a VM in Virtualbox, and you can always read the documentation or Google for some pointers, so I'll only cover the particulars of my install.
  • I started the new Gnome VM by calling it WheezyGnome - Virtualbox immediately figured it was going to be a Linux VM.  
  • I created an expanding volume, max 15 gig
  • In the Display section, I gave it 128 meg of video memory and ticked the 3d acceleration
Gnome 3 needs 3d acceleration to give you the best "experience" otherwise it starts in a fall-back mode.  When you first install any Linux distro with Gnome 3, you will need to start the fall-back mode until you have installed the "Guest Additions" to the VM.

Next ...

Next I'll talk about how I got Gnome 3 up and running in Wheezy ...



Later .....

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