XUbuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Virtual PC 2007 image available!

I have posted a Virtual PC (VPC) 2007 hard disk image and VPC configuration file for XUbuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) here: http://www.workshopmultimedia.com/virtualpc/XUbuntu_8.04.7z. (Right-click on the link and choose Save Target As… [Internet Explorer] or Save Link As… [Firefox] and save the file on your machine.) The archive is 566MB and you will need a 7-Zip-compatible extraction utility (either 7-Zip [recommended] or PeaZip) to extract the file. Extract the file to your My Virtual Machines folder on the host (Windows) system. The extracted directory requires about 3 GB of disk space on the host (Windows) system. Then, open Virtual PC 2007 and in the Virtual PC Console choose New… and select the Add an existing virtual machine option. Then locate the configuration file when prompted. The virtual machine (VM) should be ready to go!

The user account information for the image is:

User ID: vpc

Password: vpc

The virtual machine (VM) is configured to log in automatically (using the vpc account) after a delay of 30 seconds. (You can change this in the VM after logging in by going to Applications --> Settings --> Login Window and selecting the Security tab and disabling (unchecking) the Enable Timed Login option.

XUbuntu is the XFCE 4.4-based version of Ubuntu. XFCE 4.4 is a lightweight desktop environment, which runs a bit faster than Gnome or KDE in the virtual machine and doesn't require as much memory. This is a "plain vanilla" installation of XUbuntu 8.04 using the standard desktop ISO image. No additional (optional) applications have been installed, but all of the repositories are enabled.

The screen resolution for Xorg (GUI) is set to 1024 x 768 using "plain" VESA driver, since I had trouble with the S3 Trio driver. (Other resolutions and modes may be available, but I haven't tried them. To adjust these, you'll probably need to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. See here for some additional information.)

In addition, the VPC networking is configured for NAT (network address translation). Accordingly, networking "roaming mode" is disabled and the VM "wired" connection is set for DHCP, so it will connect to the network automatically when the system starts up. A "wired" connection probably sounds odd, if your host (Windows) system uses a wireless connection, but NAT in VPC is pretty cool in that you don't have to worry about whether you are using the host system's wired Ethernet port (i.e., at the office) or a wireless connection (i.e., at home), because it will "bridge" either of the connections.

This image also has the noreplace-paravirt kernel parameter applied (to both the standard GUI and "recovery mode" grub boot selections) to prevent the common (infamous?!) " An unrecoverable processor error has been encountered. The virtual machine will reset now." error.

Enjoy!