I've been fiddling with my PC for about 4 days, and finally achieved the desired result.
There's a screen shot on the left. The computer opens into Ubuntu, and then uses VirtualBox to run a version of Windows XP on top of that. Then I use Internet Explorer in that version of XP to log into my PC at work (that's the address that's been blacked out, I don't want you naughty people trying to hack my 'puter), which is running SAS.
What did you do that for? I hear you all ask? Well, I've got a big fat monster of an expensive computer at work, with lots of hard disks, and memory and processors and stuff like that. But sometimes I want to work at home, and I want to use programs (like SAS) that eat lots of memory and hard disk and stuff. So I thought about getting a computer for home that would be able to do that, but instead, I've got Ubuntu running, which is more stable and lightweight than Windows (it can also use more memory than Windows). And I don't need to worry about whether my computer is good enough to run Windows, and all the software.
Then I put a version of Windows on top of that, but because that version of
Windows then runs in something called a virtual machine - which means it's been tricked. It thinks it's running on a computer, but it's not - it's running on a pretend computer, which was set up by Ubuntu (with VirtualBox). That means that I don't need all the crap that you have to have on a Windows computer to make it secure (like antiviruses and firewalls), which slows it down - it can't do virus like stuff, because it has to ask Ubuntu, and Ubuntu won't let it. All that version of Windows has to do is be able to run Internet Explorer, and then it can log into my computer at work, so that I can do things like run programs with lots of data in SAS.
Well, that's part of the reason that I did it. The other part is because I could.
("But Jeremy" I hear you ask "couldn't you have just got internet exploder running in Ubuntu, using Wine, and then Ies4Linux?"
"Good question" I reply. "But the software that needs to be installed to make sure that my link to my work PC is secure won't run happily under Wine (or FireFox for Windows, even)." )
1 comment:
I'm not sure what is more geeky, you spending 4 days to do this, or me reading about it and thinking 'hmm, I wonder if I could ..'. Good job my home PC is better than my work one.
It's Daniel and Alex that I fear for: It's only a matter of time before "daddy daddy, can you show us how to hack into the US government again ..."
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