Getting ready for Ubuntu

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm sending this from a Virtualbox installation of Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS 64-bit. Wanted to work out the mechanics of everything in a Virtualbox client before going to a true hardware installation.

Virtualbox, a free open-source software migrating to the Windows universe by wormhole from Linux, is the best virtualization software available for general use. It allows you to share your computer resources with a virtual machine, a completely different computer installed into your software. I'll be glad to post a tutorial for producing an Ubuntu (or Mint) virtual machine running within Windows.

Now, if you're running Windows 10, this IS NOT THE ANSWER to your privacy problems. Virtualbox uses your hardware and software (Windows 10!) for input and output, so Windows 10 will just call home with all your keyboard input, snoop on your microphone (whether or not you are using it for other programs), possibly even use your webcam without notice or consent and send all that back to the mother ship twice a day. BUT Windows 10 will not have any access to the virtual hard drive in Linux because Microsoft just pretends that Linux doesn't exist and has no ext2, ext3 or ext4 read/write routines. Even in a Virtualbox installation of Linux, your Linux stored data is safe from Windows 10.

This is getting too long already. The first thing I did in my new installation was to install Steam. The Steam Linux installation routines don't work right for Linux 64-bit, but I found the workaround (it's easy) and can post a tutorial for that. Steam immediately launched and I signed into my account. THERE WERE ALL MY GAMES!!

Some games could only be streamed from Windows. But others, including my present favorite, Borderlands 2, could be downloaded and run from Linux.Doing that now and I'm very curious how it will run in Virtualbox Linux. Probably very slow. But it will give me a standard of comparison for when I do the installation on a hard drive for real.

Firefox is noticeably faster in the Virtualbox Linux than it is in native Windows 7 Pro 64. Stand by for clear instructions on how to do everything in a non-destructive manner so you can play with Linux without impacting your current Windows at all.

My goal is to get Silent Hunter 4 running under Ubuntu. That means it will run under Mint, ElementaryOS, PC Linux and all the other Ubuntu derivatives.