Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ubuntu 7.10 on Microsoft Virtual PC

File this under the "dear-god-it-shouldn't-be-so-hard" department...

It turns out that installing Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux 7.10 under Microsoft Virtual PC is a bit of a bugger. Luckily there are some helpful lads on the Web that have blogged instructions on how to fix things:

  • This blog entry is pretty good but for some reason I had problems getting the "-- i8042.noloop" option to work after Ubuntu was installed on my hard drive - the boot would just hang.
  • This one is a good 2nd source of info, and it covers topics like enabling the network card and sound in VPC, plus using the text console to edit your config (nice when the mouse doesn't work).
  • There is also a good comment from someone called Dan that explain how to change the Grub settings "properly", and how you shouldn't really remove the usplash package.

Between these three I was able to get a system working. Good luck to you should you be attempting the same thing. Some of this should be fixed in newer versions of the Linux kernel so hopefully there will be less pain for others in the future :)

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