Res Firma Mitescera Nescit

One of my first posts was how to install Ubuntu server with KDE 4.1 in my D630 but two days after i publish that post i needed to uninstall, reformat my computer and install again Ubuntu, suddendly I found that some libraries were broken in the repository and I start to think that probably I just should install gnome. My firs encounter with linux was using gnome and I like that desktop but KDE 4.1 is amazing so I decide that “I want it so I will get it”

My first configuration was: three physical partitions, two NTFS and One with several LVMs with ext3 as filesystem. One of the NTFS hold a native XP with Visual Studio and all the software needed in case I was assigned to a MS Project. The Other NTFS partition hold my music, my library and all the files needed to work, so it’s obvious why I need to have those in a shared partition (ntfs-3g is a great tool to work with NTFS filesystems from linux).

And the ugly day appeared, I need to install Windows Vista because I need to study Windows Azure, 17GB only in base installation!!!! (OS X uses 16GB with multi-language installation and developer package!!!!!), and the downloading of all the updates was not only boring, ANNOYING is the word, obviously after the complete installation with the necessary was done (that includes the antivirus) I was using 38GB of 49GB of the first partition, yes, I need to format the first partition.

So after I finished to study Azure, I decide to move back to XP because of the excesive resource use (60% of one processor’s core just for the transparency border :-S ) and in that point I decide to see if virtualization could help me with my frustration.

I decided to use the netInst of Debian (Unstable version), the partitions are LVMs and the Desktop Enviroment is KDE 4.1 (BTW, To get the wireless functional is easier than using Ubuntu) and start to look for VirtualBox or KVM.

However KVM has a better perfomance because of native use of resources, while VirtualBox actualy is paravirtualization, version 2.1 of VBox has good enhancements, but the most important thing that make me choose VBox was the NTFS support and yes the easier configuration based mostly in a nice GUI (Some of you can argue that KVM well configured can beat VBox, but I didn’t have the time to seat and to learn how to configure kvm if the enviroment had to be ready in two days maximum with xp included, while I was working with bugs )

So now I have a nice Linux system and virtualized it’s XP with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, when I need to work with Visual Studio and not only test pages with IE I assigned 2.5GB RAM and I can compile, debug and build the project solution, the use of resources is good and if someday I need to keep KDE down because of resources I just can run VBox from X