Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. It is a community of contributors from around the world who work with each other to advance the interests of the free culture movement.
The start of Fedora was with Fedora 1.0, this is the version that Red Hat has released after Red Hat 9. I was user of Red Hat Linux and then later moved on to Fedora. I have worked on Fedora 3, 5, 7, 9 and now 10. It is a great operating system. The main advantage that I see with Fedora from other Linux distribution is that, it can be used as a Server, a Desktop machine and also a learning computer for Newbie’s. I became more comfortable with Linux using Fedora only.
I am also using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, this is first Ubuntu distribution that I am using, the advantage with Ubuntu is that, it is very user friendly; this is the best Operating system for those who just migrated from windows. Using Ubuntu, you don’t have to go to command prompt to do anything. And for any Newbie, who are more comfortable to work on the GUI more can choose Ubuntu.
VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and Open Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and Open Solaris, and Open BSD.
I have used Virtual Box on Windows and also Linux Platforms, and also I heard it works really well on Mac and Solaris. As of now, I have installed Open Solaris, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Windows XP, Open Suse 11, Mandriva 2009, and Red Hat 9. All these works pretty well and also they give good performance.
The one thing that I have noticed about Virtual Box is that, since it gives a virtual Display Adapter it is not capable of running Compiz-fusion. Probably this is because the Virtual Box Adapter (emulator) is not capable of handling graphics acceleration. But other than that they are quit fine. And also if you are also considering some old Operating system also, it might be an issue. I installed Win 98 SE and Fedora Core 3 , on which the installation was successful but for FC 3 I was not able to get the UI , its dead , I am getting only a black screen. For Win 98 things are little, only issue with the drivers. In Windows 7 also the issue is with the driver, but we can still hope that in future VBox may come up with the fixes. But for FC3 and Win 98 I don’t think so .
The new version of VBox (2.1) provides good support for host network interface, and it is auto configured. Once you have installed your OS inside a virtual machine (it is called guest OS and the main OS is called Host OS for me here it is Fedora and Ubuntu), then you have to install the VBox guest addition. This is in order to configure your VBox display card, sound and network (basically all drivers). The network and IP is configured automatically you can also manually configure the IP address , but there you have to be careful of entering the gateway and DNS address, or else your network wont work correctly.
Shared drive is something that you can configure on your guest OS from a shared folder on your host OS. If the guest OS is Windows and you have already installed the guest additions then use the command net use x: \\VBoxsvr\Shared (where Shared is the name of the directory in the Host OS that is shared , this setting can be given from the VBox main window) to access the shared directory. And if the guess OS is Linux, it is just simple way of mounting your network drive (mount //VBoxsvr/Shared /mnt/Shared_drive -o username=username, password=password). You can also enable the USB support for the guest OS.
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