ToddGee.commie

So today I finally got around to installing VirtualBox on my lappy.  I had been using VMWare for many years.  I had bought a license several years ago, upgraded a couple times, and had used VMWare Player after it was made free (as in beer).  Often, however, I found myself having to patch the source for the kernel modules to get them to compile on my Fedora install.

I had often heard good things about VirtualBox so I thought I'd give it a shot.

First I had to decide between the two editions -- the free (for personal use / evaluation), but closed source standard edition and the open source edition (OSE).  I decided to install the non-open-source edition as I have need of some USB devices.

The rpmfusion rpm repository provides yum access to the OSE version of VirtualBox; but to install the standard version via yum, one must install the virtualbox.repo available straight from Sun Oracle.  I followed the instructions on this page

http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/05/how-to-install-virtualbox-3-2-on-fedora-13/

...and it worked fine.

I'm in the process of setting up Fedora 11 on my new Dell Latitude D630.  This post will document the process.

Going thru the optional packages in Fedora is always a pain, but after the required 30 minutes or so, I finished.  I reboot the machine and it came right up in Fedora, no problems.  I connected it to my local wifi network, installed the fastestmirror package, then began the 200M+ update.

Quite a while ago, when I bought my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, I knew I wanted to get Linux installed on it.  I am a Fedora guy, and at the time Core 4 was the current distro.

I needed to figure out how to tether my (Sprint) Centro to my laptop.  ("Tethering" being the cool way to say use the phone to provide network connectivity.)

After looking around, specifically at this page, I purchased the Mobile Stream USB Modem software.  (I use their Card Reader software already and it works great.)  I followed the directions on the ubuntu tutorials site and was able to get network connectivity right away.

Of course, I had to do a few more things (get name service set up, etc.)  Being the script compulsive person I am, I wrote the script below (also attached as file) to facilitate this system.  Now all I gotta' do is get connection sharing working and I'll be golden.

Before the script tho, some other links:
           June Fabrics 'PdaNet' software, according to reports on the 'net, works well; but is Winders only, so a no-go.
           A page on getting DUN working w/ bluetooth on the Mac.  Has some interesting words about getting a Vision password.  I found it wasn't necessary as did the person who wrote the Ubuntu tutorial.