Having trouble with VirtualBox

Good Day,
After a very good review of your product from CNET.com, I thought I'd give it a try. I downloaded the 8.1 Core version, burned it onto a DVD, and installed it in an Oracle VM VirtualBox. That's where things went wrong. I couldn't install the Guest Additions, because I first had to install DKMS, and no matter what I tried the OS wouldn't let me. I kept getting the message that I was not authorized to install, well anything.

I always try out a new OS in a VirtualBox VM. That's where I have Windows 8.1 right now. My question to you is, is this a problem with VirtualBox, or and incompatibility with your OS? I really would love to give your OS a real test, but if I can't even log on to the internet, or download any upgrades, I guess I'm stuck.

Any help, or suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated, as I had intended to move to the Ultimate version once I had gotten my feet wet with the Core version. Thanking you in advance.
Regards,
TMV
tmv_@bigfoot.com

Being a virtualbox user myself, my first question is why did you waste a DVD by burning it? Virtualbox accepts .iso files to be mounted, and it would chop install time depending on the speed of your hard disk.
I know for a fact that v box networking works without guest additions, as I had it working on my virtual machine. Just remember that running panic video drivers on an emulated video card is going to be painful, so whatever graphical tasks you are trying to accomplish will run much faster once installed for real.
Under the machine settings try turning the network adaptor back to the default host only network. Should that fail try using the bridged connection option. Now, I don't understand why guest additions has a dependency on dkms, but I think that's wrong. Try dropping the .run in a terminal window. And hit enter

Dear botcrusher,

It wasn't so much for the networking that I wanted to install the guest editions, but so Zorin could talk to Windows. You know, copy files use the USB slots, and yes, to be able to use the network. It couldn't. I couldn't even open up Chrome. As far as updating anything, as I said, I kept getting the warning that I was not authorized to download anything. Even though I was set up as the administrator.

As far as your other suggestions go, I may need a little hand holding here. This is my first time with Linux, and you are speaking well above my head. Perhaps you could expand on your answer a little, I would be able to follow along and get it. I'm sure with time I can lean Linux, it's the first few steps that always seem to trip me up.

Regards,
TMV

Hi,

I don't do it myself but you can look here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Ubuntu-on-VirtualBox

http://cybrwrld.blogspot.de/2012/10/fee ... l-box.html

On YOutube there are plenty of vids, one example below which I haven't checked out btw!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt8wrKBKrt0

For partitioning:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Howto ... ningBasics

Hope it helps!.

Hi,

your other post is locked as a double post!:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7049

Dear botcrusher,

You said I might be better off installing Zorin on a separate hard drive. Would you suggest I put the Windows Hard Drive as Drive 0, or the Zorin Hard Drive as Drive 0? The reason I'm asking, is I was thinking of buying a 3TB Drive for my Windows (partitioning it into 3 drives), and using one of my existing 1TB Drives for Zorin. I just don't know which drive should go first in the chain. Any thoughts?

Regards,
TMV

Hi, DON'T! No GNU/Linux OS can see anything above 2 TB!

My humble rig:

Homebrew:
Asus M5 A 78L-M USB3, AMD Phenom II X6 1045T Processor
4 Gb RAM (can't remember speed - it was a bundle with the board)
On-board AMD Gallium Graphics replaced by nVidia GeForce GT620 (vga/dvi/hdmi) - vga used (didn't like shrinkage on boot screen!

1 x 170 Gb ExcelStor (Zorin 8 64-bit Ultimate)
1 x 200 Gb Western Digital (Windows 7 Pro 32-bit)
1 x 400 Gb Hitachi DeskStar (Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit)

I have never had an experience of GNU/Linux taking over a Windows Partition - unless you let the OS do its own thing - I have ALWAYS used the 'something else' method where Ubuntu distros have been concerned. The only issue on seeing a Windows Drive recently was down to Windows 8.1's 'sleep mode' due to hidden power settings that Gizmuntu posted about to resolve the issue (will have to look at this again as after an update Windows has put its power options back on!

I don't like running OS's permanently in Virtual Mode apart from demo purposes and Virtual Box has become quite complex (to mee) with all the 'image' variants of Hard Drive it offers. To get network and other bits working you should really be using the latest version of VB and the matching VB Extension Pack which is not present on Ultimate.

If you do put Zorin on a sepaate drive, be sure that you boot the GRUB (bootloader) on the same drive - it will pick up the Windows Bootloader from your Windows Drive without any problems.

See my tutorial vid which should actually state 'DON'T DO THE FORMATTING FIRST AS YOU WILL HAVE TO DO IT ALL AGAIN ANYWAY AT POINT OF INSTALL!

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v67233697bJ2bS9jm

Well the drive you decide to use for zero is up to you, personally I left my ntfs drive alone at 0, also because zorin didn't detect windows that installation I didn't want to risk installing on there since it saw the whole drive as empty rather than the 1Tb I had emptied for it. , but afterwards it found the windows boot loader and added it to the grub menu, so I just told my bios to change the hdd boot order to boot drive 1 (zorin) first and then if I want to boot windows I just scroll the the grub option.
Note: grub is zorin's loader and since you will probably have to manually partition this make sure that if windows is not detected, make SURE that the drive that is selected to install the boot manager is not the windows drive. So in your case set that one to /dev/sdb
As for the partitioning itself, here is what I did,
At the beginning of the free space, I put a 6144 MB swap partition,
Then I put a 150 MB partition that is set to mount at /boot
And lastly I put the rest as an ext4 partition mounted at /

Alright now if you want to run keep running it in virtualbox for a bit this should work, but I'm assuming that you already installed zorin to the virtual hard drive.
Insert the guest additions cd through the menu like normal, then, when the disk shows up open terminal, and take the .run file on the disk and drop it on the terminal window. Should it give you an error try doing that again, but put a "sudo " before you drop in the .run file then drop in the file and press enter. Then enter your password when prompted, and presto! It should install as for chrome not opening I'm not sure why it won't, I had it running when I was using zorin inside a virtual machine
Edit: oh i see he beat me to it! Oh well we are saying the same thing, just I put my guide in here

Edit edit:I realize I forgot to mention that I have seen a linux os do a hostile takeover of my drive when letting it supposedly install beside windows, the os in question was (to be fair) a modded version of steam OS designed to boot with grub. The same goes for any OS just be careful and read all the prompts concerning partitioning VERY WELL.

The easiest way to avoid picking up windows at point of install is to .... just disconnect the drive!

Good Evening,

Thank you all for the advice. I will try to install Zorin in a VM again. I'll let you know what happens. Though I am new to Zorin, I'm not exactly a newbie to Unix. Way back in the dirty old DOS days, I was one of the first ones to play around on the internet, when it was all Unix. Granted, I have forgotten as much about Unix, as I have about DOS. I'm proud I went through the early DOS & Unix days, but I don't want to relive them.

That's why Zorin attracted me. However, if I can't do anything with it, outside of the computer, it's not much good to me. I need a way for it to see my Windows installation, copy & paste files, and most important of all, get on to the Web. These are things I couldn't do on my first try. Your advice, and videos are a source of great help, and I will keep them by my side when I install Zorin again.

As I said, I'm thinking of buying a 3TB hard drive, just for my Windows installation, and installing Zorin on it's own 1TB hard drive. I'm still unsure what drive I should put first in the drive chain (sorry for harkening back to a SCSI reference). It's just that I'm reluctant to install Zorin on the same drive I have my Windows partition on, after what you said about it trying to wipe that partition. So, yes I'd like to install it on it's own hard drive, but still have a boot menu. Is that asking for too much? I'm not afraid to spend some money on this to get it working, because once I get it working, I can begin to learn the in's and out's of the OS.

Now that Microsoft seems to have abandoned the Desk Top, I think it's more imperative than ever to learn Linux. And, with your help, I think I can. Thanks again for your help.

Regards,
TMV

Hi TMV, Did you see my post about 2TB limit? That also means it WON'T see your Windows! I have Virtual Box on this Rig and I downloaded both 32- and 64-bt versions of 8.1 - which version are you playing with? Also what type of Virtual Hard Disk are you using when you setup Zorin 8.1 in VB?

best of luck to you!
Grub should be able to see the windows boot loader and add it as an option to it's boot menu, the order I which you put the drives is negligable but I would recommend that you tell the bios to boot the zorin hdd first.
There is an ntfs driver... I think its called ntfs-3G if somone can confirm that?
Just a heads up that you will see moving files between the ntfs drive and the nix' one will be slower than in windows, since ntfs does rely on that add on driver. (Same as with Mac) once you move on from the vm though, finding the right gpu driver is the fun part since nouveau seems to give absolutely terrible results in terms of 3d-acceleration and compiz smoothness

Hi botcruncher, I have yet to see VB img talk to ntfs - ntfs-3g is automatically present in Zorin anyway - how well it works as a virtual machine is really asking too much IMHO.

why are none of you able to say my name correctly XD
Fist "botcruhsher"
And now "botcruncher"
oh well...
It is possible to give a entire drive to the virtual machine as per the vmdk standard.
There is documentation on the site vbox site, but Take EXTREME caution not to talk to the partition the host is running on. This can lead to Major and un recoverable corruption if you are unlucky. Another no-no that leads to certain death is using the host to boot the host. Ie: windows is running virtual box, and you tell virtualbox to boot the C:\ drive which might work for about 30 seconds before the virtual os loads something the real one has loaded. I actually have an old xp machine I'm going to try this on, I'll try to post that since I need to wipe the thing anyways

Dear Swarfendor437,

I am using the 64 bit version of Zorin OS 8.1, and I am creating a Static VHD in VB. I gave it lot's of room to play in (60 GB). I think I fell afoul in the setup. I re-read the review from CNET.com last night, and on the whole it was positive, except for the setup. Here is what James Watson said;

Zorin uses the Ubuntu installer (ubiquity), rebranded with Zorin graphics and messages. I won't spend a lot of time going through that in detail, it has been described many times and in many places. I will, however, pass along the biggest and most important piece of advice that I have about installing Zorin at this point (here comes the rant).

When you get to "Who are You", where you create your user account, you should select the "Log in Automatically" box. This is something that I never do, and I never recommend, but I am making an exception here. Why? Because if you don't, then when you reboot after installing you will get a login screen, with "Guest Session" as the default account.

You can then login with any password you like, or no password at all, and you will be in a special temporary restricted account. You can run user programs — browsers, office and such - but you can't do anything administrative to the system. You can't enter a wi-fi password to connect to a wireless network, for example.

You can't sudo to get around these restrictions, and you can't even su to whatever user account you created during the installation. What you can do, I can tell you from experience, is get more and more frustrated and angry as you try to understand what is going on, until you are ready to throw the computer down on the floor and stomp on it, or play it a little safer and just fire the Zorin OS USB stick out the window into the cow pasture.

If you find yourself in this situation, the correct thing to do is logout, and then on the login screen click where it says "Guest Session", and the user name you created during installation will "magically" appear above the login prompt. You're still not home and dry, though, because you then have to click on your name, and that will change the login prompt to your account, and you can login.

Okay, who thought this was a good idea, and why? This is supposed to be an "easy transition from Windows" kind of a system. Does Windows contain this bizarre behaviour, and I'm just not aware of it? I've certainly never seen it before.

Does it seem natural, obvious or intuitive to anyone? If it didn't come from Windows, then where did it come from? Zorin is derived from Ubuntu, did it come from there? I install every new release of Ubuntu, and login at least once, and I follow exactly the procedure that I used here, and I've never seen Ubuntu do this either.

This is without a doubt one of the most obnoxious things I have ever seen a Linux distribution do, and I just can't make any sense of it. If someone would like to enlighten me about it in the comments, I would really appreciate it.

If you take my advice above and set "Log in Automatically", then when you reboot after the installation is complete you will be logged into whatever account you created. That makes perfect sense to me — I don't particularly like it from a security viewpoint, but it certainly makes more sense than presenting you with an intentionally misleading login screen.

Unfortunately, if you happen to logout you will then still be presented with the "Guest Session" default login. If that happens, go back to the beginning of my rant and read it all again.

Here is the most important question of all. Why is there no mention of this in the Release Notes or the Installation Guide (such as it is)? Would that be too much to ask?

Maybe I am just as thick as a brick, but I don't seem to be the only person who has run into this, once you start looking around you can find comments on the release announcement and in the Zorin User Forums from people who have had it too. Of course, it is one of those things that once you figure it out it's obvious, and you probably never think about it again.

But until you figure it out, it's maddening — and if the objective is to make a Linux distribution which provides an "easy" transition for Windows users, I would suggest that avoiding or at least clearly documenting things like this should be a top priority. But maybe that's just me... Please note, those are his words, not mine.

I think when I install it again, I will follow his instructions, and your suggestions. Now, on to my plan to buy a 3TB hard drive for my Windows installation. I understand that Linux can't see anything over 2TB. I would partition the 3TB drive into 3 1TB Drives. One for my OS and programs, files, & data, the second for all my software files (when I buy a program today I rarely get a CD, but a download I keep all of those program installation files (Freeware, Shareware, and Retail) on my D:\ drive, and the third partition would be for my downloads. Everything I download from the internet, no matter where I get it goes to my E:\ drive first. There I can examine it to see if it's what I needed, and check it with my Virus & Malware Checker, before I move it onto my D:\ drive, and install it from there. So Zorin would only see three 1TB drives in the Window section, and have it's own 1TB drive to play in. As they would all add up to four partitions, they would all be primary partitions. I wouldn't even have to venture into Logical partitions. I have given this some thought.

I think I will try to get Zorin up & running again tonight on VirtualBox. Same setup as before 8GB of RAM, and a 60GB VHD. Any last minute advice you might have for me would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
TMV

Erm slight issue with that. It doesn't matter how many partitions you make, if the size of the whole drive is over 2Tb it will not see it. It's just the way grub works!
Now zorin may be able to recognize the drives afterwards or by some really sketchy drivers.

Edit: scratch that! It is in fact possible and has been done since Ubuntu 10
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/e ... Q/218575en
Sadly this may fall under the category of sketchy.

Dear botcrusher,

That is a bit of a sticky wicket. I may just have to get myself a used laptop, just for Zorin. This is turning out to be more complicated than I thought it would be. Now do you see why I want to set it up on VirtualBox, and do all the testing first?

Regards,
TMV

Hmm, well let's see the partition table as I think I see it:
/dev/sda (3 Tb HDD) <-- windows drive
/dev/sda1 (windows c:\, NTFS, 1TB)
/dev/sda2 (Data D:\, NTFS, 1TB)
/dev/sda3 (downloads e:\, NTFS, 1TB)
/dev/sdb (1TB HDD ) <-- Zorin Drive
/dev/sdb1 ( swap, 6GB)
/dev/sdb2 ( Zorin OS, ext4, rest of drive)

Now this whole time we have been assuming you really want a fancy(ish) boot menu to select the os, there is another way around this using your bios. Depending on your bios, (most use f12 for this) you should be able to select which device you boot off of. It might not be pretty, but it will get the job done without worrying about corrupting windows or 'nix

Dear botcrusher,

That looks about right, but bare in mind that I am very new to Linux so, I really don't know what /dev/sda, /dev/sda1, etc. are all about yet. I've just downloaded some e-Books on Linux, and am in the process of going through them now. Unfortunately, many of them are quite a few years old. I've got "Teach Yourself Linux In 24 Hours" from 1998, "Linux The Complete Reference" from 2008, "Linux Bible 2008 Edition", and others of the same ilk.

I was hoping that if I installed Zorin in it's own VHD, in VirtualBox, it would be a painless installation, and I could get right to work, and start to learn it. Unfortunately, as I have said, my first try was anything but successful. I was locked in a sort of guest account, that didn't allow me to do much of anything. I kept getting the dreaded "You are not authorized to preform that function" message. So, I deleted the entire installation, with the intent to do it over once I had become a little more acquainted with Zorin.

Your assistance has been very much appreciated, However, your still talking over my head. Remember, I come from a long line of Windows use, where I didn't have to pre-partition the hard drive, and if I did later on, I had utilities to do it for me. I've got more Windows utilities than you could shake a stick at. Linux is, for all intense and purposes, new to me. So talk slowly, and use small words. You have a newbie here, who want's to learn. Don't overwhelm me.

Regards,
TMV

OK, It is sad that the devs got the login messed up before release, like I have posted elsewhere, if you use the up and down cursor keys you will get to see your username and then after you have logged in the first time with your username there will be no issue. I am surprised that the ranter about Zorin failed to mention about Ubuntus failure to login at all on occasion, even after entering the correct password so somehow this 'buntu bug could have had implications for the login on 8/8.1 - I speculate of course!

Now then, GNU/Linux orders the drives thus:

sda = the first hard drive in your system so sda1 = C drive if you have windows and nothing else on that first drive
sdb = the next drive on your system and may have sdb1 for '/' (system partition which should be 15 Gb minimum - after issues I had with PearLinux I usually now make this 30 Gb defacto but you could make this any size you want.

After creating the primary partition I usually make an 'Extended partition' and at the END of that I put the 'swap area' = amount of RAM you have on board but nothing less than 4 Gb.
At the BEGINNING of the extended partition I create '/home' formatted to 'ext4'

The only difference in file systems will be if you have a Solid State Drive - this may need 'trimming' before install, and formatted to 'ext2' to preserve expected life - but I haven't checked on the latest state of play with regards SSD's.

Now my layout mimics what an auto install does - if you let Zorin or any Ubuntu based distro (haven't tried others of late) the swap area ALWAYS goes at the end of the drive.

Remember, '/home' is where ',wine' exists and ultimately, all your Windows Apps reside there in the 'dummy' C: drive so best to have plenty of spece for that.

Now 'sdx' labeling is relatively new, and reflects that most drives these days are Sata Drives (hence the 'sd' enumeration).

Before this it would be 'hd0' 'hd1' and so-forth - beloved floppy drives - 'fdo'.

Hope this helps!

The order in which you put the swap, root, and home directories is not critical BUT
I prefer to put the swap first at the beginning of the drive due to a design flaw with HDD's where the disk gets slower the closer you get to the end of it (the middle) and since swap is like really slow ram, it needs all the boosting it can get.

Good article on Swap here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

- and if what you say is correct, why do all Ubuntu derivatives, including Zorin, put swap at the end then? (if you allow it to do its own thing)

Just found this:

"4.4.3. Where should I put my swap space?

The short answer is anywhere is fine. However, if you are interested in extracting as much speed as possible, there are two basic strategies (other than buying more RAM).

Split the swap space across multiple drives, or at least on the drive you write to least.

Put each swap partition on the outer tracks.

Here are the considerations:

If you have a disk with many heads and one with less heads and both are identical in other parameters, the disk with many heads will be faster. Reading data from different heads is fast, since it is purely electronic. Reading data from different tracks is slow, since it involves physically moving the head.

It follows then that writing swap on a separate drive will be faster than moving the head back and forth on a single drive.

Placement: Older disks have the same number of sectors on all tracks. With these disks it will be fastest to put your swap in the middle of the disks, assuming that your disk head will move from a random track towards the swap area.

Newer disks use ZBR (zone bit recording). They have more sectors on the outer tracks. With a constant number of rpms, this yields a far greater performance on the outer tracks than on the inner ones. Put your swap on the fast tracks. (In general, low-numbered cylinders are associated low partition numbers. However, see Kristian's more recent comments on this issue. -Tony)

Usage: Of course your disk head will not move randomly. If you have swap space in the middle of a disk between a constantly busy home partition and an almost unused archive partition, you would be better of if your swap were near the home partition for even shorter head movements. You would be even better off, if you had your swap on another otherwise unused disk, though.

Striping: Speed can be increased by writing to multiple swap areas simultaneously. Swap spaces with the same priority will be written to like a RAID. See Section 9.3.

Summary: Put your swap on a fast disk with many heads that is not busy doing other things. If you have multiple disks: Split swap and scatter it over all your disks or even different controllers."

From: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/req ... pPlacement

assuming a drive uses ZBR like a good little disk, then it will be faster at the beginning, now, to be fair, if you put the boot sector with the os at the beginning the os will boot a little faster, so it all depends on which you want to give a slight boost
Boot time,
Or faster swap performance

OK, I've been reading a lot, and I think I understand what you are saying. No matter what Windows uses to name the partitions on the drives, Linux will have it's own convention. I've also been giving some thought to the two GB limit for Linux. If I bought a 2GB drive, then partitioned it into two 1GB partitions first,C:\ Windows, and the second partition for Zorin /dev/sdb1 etc. Then used a second 2GB hard drive partitioned for D:\ Files, & E:\ Down Loads, that might work better.

I bought my computer in 2011, and it's about time I replace my hard drives anyway. As far as solid stat hard drives go, I'm not a fan. They are still far too expensive per MB, and I think that traditional hard drives have a lot more years to go on them. Yes, I know the argument, that SSHD's are much faster, but they are a lot more temperamental, and way too expensive.

As for James Watson, that one section was a rant, but on the whole, it was a very positive article on Zorin. It was his article, by the way, that led me to want to try out Zorin in the first place. I'm going to do a bit more reading, then give Zorin another try on VirtualBox. Again, I'm going to let the installer have it's way, unless you have any thoughts to the contrary.

Thank you for your response, I'm keeping everything I send, and get in return, in a Word document so I can print it out, and have it handy when I reinstall. Many thanks for your time.

Regards,
TMV

Hi TMV, glad to be of assistance friend! Also was that a typo error? I can't find many 2 Gb hard drives around these days! (I still have my very first 1 Gb hard drive - a Fujitsu!

i have a couple 8GB fireball's from an old imac G3 :3
that was the "gaming machine" of my childhood

I've got a couple of quantum fireballs (20 Gb) still functional on older rigs!

Good Day,

OK, OK, you got me. It was a typo. I meant to say 2TB. I'm leaning towards the Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive. Unless anyone has any good reasons to go with something else. Having two of then as internal drives won't upset anything else in Linux, will it?

Regards,
TMV

Well never been there - give it a shot - at some stage I hope to purchase a WD (would have been Samsung but sadly Seagate own them now and the brand has gone forever! - I'll never buy Seagate again!)

I know a couple IT guys who agree and this is also from personal experience, but i have not had ANY luck WHATSOEVER with Western digital drives.
I have had way to many of em burn out on me, and if you ask me their last great drive were the 128 Gb PATA caviar's i still have both of em still ticking away. One has Windows 2k, and the other has dual-boot OSX 10.4 and a reaallllly misconfigured Ubuntu 12.04 precise Pangolin PowerPC build

....
MY GOD
I SHOULD THROW ZORIN ON THERE
oh wait...
c***.
ppc
D:

Put elementary OS on it instead then!

I know what your saying, but in my price range I've only got two options Seagate, and Western Digital. Over the years, and there has been a lot of them it's always the Seagate's that go on me. I just replace a Seagate drive in my computer, because it was acting up, and it was under warrantee. So, I tend to lean towards the Western Digital.

I don't know if this Green Drive is anything more than a publicity stunt, or not, but I can buy a new 2TB one at Newegg, and Tiger Direct for $100. plus tax. That I can manage, even on my pension.

Hi, likewise, I bought a Seagate 300 Gb drive a while back - why? Because the 'market analysts' reported that all the big HDTV recorder boxes were being shipped with them, plus it came with a 5 year warranty. Failed in the 3rd year - Seagate agreed to replace BUT I had to pay postage to return and the replacement was to be a RECONDITIONED unit!

Samsung were great - sadly bought up by Seagate - always quiet drive - I have a green one in the 'main' PC. Currently using cast-offs from youngun's pcs on this rig. Hope to get a WD at some stage in the future.

Thanks Swarfendor437,

I will get them, but first I have a whopping great vet bill I have to pay off. My older cat got sick, and long story short, I owe the vet $400. Because I have been a "good" client for many years, they are letting me pay it off $100, a month. So I doubt it will be until August that I will be able to buy one. I'll get the second one in September. It sucks to be on a fixed income.

Luckily, after a career working with computers, inside, and out, I'll have no trouble installing the little devils myself. I rather enjoy cracking open the old case, giving it a good cleaning with compressed gas, and doing little things to tune it up. When I bought my laptop, it was a project for me. I got it on e-bay for $100. There wasn't much to it, 60GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, CD-RW, and Window XP.

After a tear down, and a good cleaning, I goosed it up to 1TB HD, 4GB RAM, DVD-RW, and Windows 7 Ultimate. I'm happy to say it runs great. The battery life is a little short (only 2 hours), but Dell still sells new battery packs for it, so I'm not worried. I have a spare power supply that fits in the carrying case with it. By the way, I partitioned the hard drive into two 500 GB partitions, C:\ is my Windows drive, and D:\ is for all my software. So when I take my laptop to a service call, yes I do some consulting, and repair work, I have all the software I could ever need at my finger tips.

The way I look at it, I get enjoyment out of fixing, or upgrading computers. There are lot's of people who would like to upgrade their computers, or need to fix them. So if we meet, and set a fare price, it's a win, win situation. I think anyone of us, who have reached a citron skill level could not only supplement their income, but provide a very useful service. What do you think, all of you?

Totally agree! I had great joy on Friday installing LXLE - I would have liked to have put Zorin on but the Toshiba notebook was not powerful enough and after I researched the machine found a post where someone had installed Lubuntu on the exact same model! So the reason? Well friend had XP on it, didn't want 8 and was considering 7 but notebook a bit underpowered and I think full of gremlins - took ages to boot (and shut down) and IE 8 issues! Now very zippy - was very pleased that I got his Windows App working - all it needed was WINE adding to get it to run out-of-the-box. Picked up his Epson SX-205 practically instantly but saw it as a '200' - I know Zorin would have seen the 205 but sadly the machine would not have been up to it (processor wise). Got Skype installed no problem - the only issue that I could not resolve was the poor build of Google Earth for Linux (7) and his machine underpowered for 3d anyways so not too bothered - advised to see if 'Google Maps' might be better via the Web. Generally very pleased with his install - 18 seconds to login then practically instant access to Desktop after login and shut-down in couple of seconds and everything very quick!

the only issue that I could not resolve was the poor build of Google Earth for Linux (7) and his machine underpowered for 3d anyways so not too bothered - advised to see if 'Google Maps' might be better via the Web.

I have a solution for that because I have faced the same problem is some underpowered laptops.

Install either GE 6 (or GE5 if GE6 will not work either). It will work like a charm.

Here are the links from my dropbox:

GE6: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x13slqf5r12de ... t_i386.deb
GE5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/59rn181iuqiei ... 1_i386.deb

You (and your friend) can thank me later...

Hi madvinegar, you must have read my mind! I will email the links to my friend - many thanks! (600 blue jewels to you sir! )

Won't 'hijack' this thread again, but I am sad to inform you that the guys hard drive died yesterday afternoon - it was in a 10 year old rig (Toshiba Equium) have advised to get a new drive rather than a new box - he was really getting to like LXLE as well. Anyhow, many thanks madvinegar once more - I did download it onto my stick for potential future installs of 'lightweight' distros on 'lightweight' notebooks!
Thanks again friend!

Good Day,
After a very good review of your product from CNET.com, I thought I'd give it a try. I downloaded the 8.1 Core version, burned it onto a DVD, and installed it in an Oracle VM VirtualBox. That's where things went wrong. I couldn't install the Guest Additions, because I first had to install DKMS, and no matter what I tried the OS wouldn't let me. I kept getting the message that I was not authorized to install, well anything.

I always try out a new OS in a VirtualBox VM. That's where I have Windows 8.1 right now. My question to you is, is this a problem with VirtualBox, or and incompatibility with your OS? I really would love to give your OS a real test, but if I can't even log on to the internet, or download any upgrades, I guess I'm stuck.

Sorry this is late but hopefully it will help someone:

How I Got Guest Additions to Install

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get upgrade
3. sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
4. sudo apt-get install build-essential dkms
5. sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms

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A general comment about VirtualBox & Zorin...

I've been having a variety of problems with my setup. I've been using Virtualbox with Windows and Linux guests for several years now. I was hoping to use Zorin as a Windows alternative in a virtual environment but there are some issues with my Zorin guest that I haven't been able to resolve. They include:
1. Persistent non-fatal errors keep being reported by the OS.
2. Taking a screenshot results just a black screen being saved.
3. Certain website text boxes aren't rendered correctly in Firefox on Zorin (see attached) but look fine in my Ubuntu guest with Firefox (same machine).
4. Can't see files within a shared folder after mounting it.

Again, my other guests (Windows XP, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc) all behave fine. But for whatever reason, my Zorin guest doesn't. So I guess my advice to the OP would be to continue down the path of installing Zorin on a separate machine.