Install Ubuntu on Windows using VMware Player
Would you like to use Ubuntu Linux programs, but prefer the convenience of Windows 7? With VMware Player, you can install a full copy of Ubuntu and integrate it with your Windows 7 computer for free.
VMware Player makes it easy to install Ubuntu Linux as a virtual machine in only 5 clicks. It then offers easy access to Ubuntu programs straight from your desktop with Unity mode. Here’s how you can set this up on your computer.
Getting Started
First, download and install VMware Player (link below). It is a free download, but requires registration. I’ve used VMware Workstation 6.5. You can use the latest versions of VMware Player or Workstation available as well.
You may see some prompts about installing drivers; simply approve them. We didn’t see them on our latest test, but have in the past. When you are finished installing VMware Player, you will have to restart your computer.
![sshot-2010-02-16-[19-14-34]](https://i0.wp.com/www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sshot20100216191434.png)
Install Ubuntu
Once you have installed VMware Player and downloaded Ubuntu, you’re ready to setup Ubuntu. Open VMware Player, and choose “Create a New Virtual Machine.”
You can install Ubuntu from a disk, or directly from the ISO file you can download (link below). This is the simplest method if you’re simply wanting to use Ubuntu in VMware Player. However, if you do have an Ubuntu disk, then feel free to choose that instead. Once you’ve selected your install media, VMware Player will automatically detect Ubuntu and will show that it will be installed with Easy Install. Click next to continue.
Now enter your name, user name, and password. All fields are required.
Please note that the username can only have lowercase characters and numbers.
Also, the password must be at least 8 characters long.
Now, choose a name for your virtual machine and where to save it. Simply click next to accept the defaults.
You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 20Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish. Please note that the entire 20Gb will not be used up on your hard drive initially. Ours only took up 3.6Gb with a clean install, but this will increase as you install programs and save files.
And that’s it! You can review your settings and change them here if you wish, or simply click Finish to start installing Ubuntu!
VMware player will now install Ubuntu without any further input. The window may show cryptic commands, but don’t worry, as you don’t have to do anything else to install Ubuntu.
During the install, you may be prompted to download and install VMware tools for Linux. Simply click Download and the tools will automatically download and install, though you may have to approve the UAC prompt.
VMware will continue installing Ubuntu even while the tools are downloading. Once the install is finished, you will be presented with your Ubuntu login screen. The full install took about 30 minutes in our test.
Select your user name, then enter your password to access Ubuntu.
Welcome to your Ubuntu desktop!
Installing VMware Tools
VMware Player will attempt to automatically install the VMware tools into Ubuntu during the initial setup, but sometimes this does not work. In our test, the tools failed to install during the Ubuntu setup since our internet connection was down. In your tests, it may or may not automatically install. If it doesn’t, follow the following steps to install them. Please not that this is fairly complicated, so be sure to enter the correct things during the install.
To install the tools, click VM and then select “Install VMware Tools” in the menu.
This will open a File Browser window. Double click on the VMwareTools icon; this should look like a box that says tar.gz on the front.
This will open the compressed file. Click the Extract button at the top of the window.
Now, choose where to save the files. Simply click “Desktop” on the left, and then click Extract.
This will take a moment. When the files are extracted, click “Close”.
Now, click the Applications menu at the top of the screen, click Accessories, and then click Terminal.
Enter the following to access the files you unzipped before:
cd ./Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib
Now, enter:
sudo bash
and enter your password when prompted. Please note that the password will not show while you are typing it in; simply type it in, and press Enter when completed.
Now we can install the VMware tools. To do this, enter:
./vmware-install.pl
and then simply press enter at the prompts to accept the defaults. It should ask a total of 5 questions, and just press enter at all of them. 
After a bit, it may ask the following questions about documentation files; simply press enter again at each prompt.
The installation is now complete. You will still need to configure the tools, so simply enter “yes” at the prompt to automatically do that.
It may ask to enable an experimental backup feature; we simply entered “no” at this prompt.
Then, it will want to setup the graphics configurations. Enter “yes” at the prompt. Your screen may flicker or go black momentarily while it is changing these settings.
Finally, you will see the following message when the install is complete.
Restart Ubuntu by clicking on the button with your username at the top right, and then selecting Restart from the menu.
Once your virtual machine has rebooted, login to Ubuntu as before and your setup is complete!
Integrate Ubuntu with Windows 7
You can already use all of Ubuntu’s tools and features directly from the Ubuntu desktop in VMware Player. But, if you would like to use your Ubuntu programs seamlessly in Windows, we need to activate Unity mode. Click VM and then Unity Mode in the VMware Player Menu.
Now, you will have an Ubuntu menu right above your Windows 7 Start button!
By default, the Ubuntu windows will have a border and VMware logo on them.
To change this, click VM and then Settings, select the Options tab, and uncheck the “Show borders” and “Show badges” boxes.
Now the windows will look just like they do in Ubuntu.
You can run Ubuntu windows side-by-side with Windows 7 windows, and can copy and paste, drag-and-drop between the windows, and more! The Ubuntu programs’ icons show up in the taskbar the same as normal Windows programs.
You can access all of the files in your Ubuntu virtual machine from the Ubuntu menu. Select Other, and then choose Computer or Home Folder.
Conclusion
VMware Player gives us an exciting way to have a complete Ubuntu install right inside Windows 7. This would work the exact same on any modern version of Windows, including all editions of XP and Vista. In this tutorial we used Ubuntu 9.10, but other recent editions should work the same.
Links
C/C++ Programming on Linux using GCC
Hey Guys !! I’m back again with some Technical Stuff once again.
Well Just few days back, I was in search for a place where i could get proper techniques of C/C++ Programming under Linux Platforms using GCC. Actually, I’ve mostly used Windows in my Life and as a matter of fact, I’ve used either Turbo C++ or Dev C++ under Windows Platforms. I even didn’t required anything else so far. But since my MAD Professor insisted us to practice C++ in Linux, my search for E-books, Documents and Softwares beings, for understanding C/C++ in Linux using GCC/G++ compiler, begins.
It took me a while to figure out that Linux is in fact the best Operating System or OS, for typical Non-Gamers unlike me. 😛 And whenever I DO login Windows, even by mistake, I am greeted by a slew of viruses and a painfully slow speed. Anyways, I figured I should do even my C programming on Linux. It was there in my coursework from college you know!
There are two ways in which you can program in C in Linux:
1) Use an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) like Netbeans or Codeblocks.
OR
2) Use the inbuilt GCC compiler, like I did.
GCC basically stands for GNU C Compiler. Its not actually an IDE, but it kinda works when you get used to it. Plus, its easier to setup. Many people (including me) were in a total state of confusion at first, but hey, turns out its pretty simple!
Let me illustrate the steps you need to take to compile and build a program on a Linux machine.
1) Type out your code in a text file (on gedit) and give it a “.c” extension. It actually works. Atleast in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick, your pre-processor code will have a different colour than the rest, and so on, like a normal IDE.
2) Go to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. Use the command “cd” to navigate to the directory where your “.c” file is stored. Eg: If your file is stored in “Documents” under the root folder, the type “cd Documents” in the terminal.
3) If your filename is say, “code.c”, then type “gcc code.c -o code”. This compiles and builds your required file.
4) Type “./code” to run your program. And Its all done !!
And of course, if u need to use C++, just replace “gcc” by “g++”. And save the file as “.cpp”. The rest is all basically the same. Even sometimes, It can happen that GCC may not be installed in your OS. Not a problem. It will automatically prompt you to install it in a couple of simple steps, which require you just pressing “y/n”.
At the end of the day, Linux programming may not give you a very distinct advantage, but hey, its different! Its a skill that you’ll need to learn eventually maybe and since I got to know how to get with it easily, so why not learn it now? 😉
Install and Run C++ In Windows 7
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Well Guys, Since most of us are having Windows 7 Operating Systems in our PCs or Lappies. I’ve noticed that there is problem in Installing some of the Old C++ compliers (especially Turbo C++). A lot of my friends are still having a difficulty in Installing and further Running the Application.
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Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities
Hello Guys !! 8)
Well, This time I’ve brought something really interesting for Y’all.
It’s the little things that make a Windows system great—like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
Note: Most of these apps do, indeed, use less than 10MB of hard drive space when installed, or use that much when they’re running in the background. Some will scale in use as you demand more or less from them—DisplayFusion or UltraMon, for example, when handling very high-resolution backgrounds or a wall of monitors—but all should have an almost negligible performance impact on a modern system.
10. Taskbar Shuffle
You don’t open your programs in the order you want them nealy arranged on your taskbar, you open them when you need them. Taskbar Shuffle knows this, and makes it easy to quickly swap windows around, along with system tray icons. It also allows you to close out windows with a simple middle-click, which alone could make it worth the roughly 6MB price of admission. You won’t know you wanted to fling windows out of your cursor’s way until you try it.
9. Everything
It’s probably smaller than your desktop wallpaper. But Everything is more useful and efficient than applications 25x its size. Everything only searches through file names, not inside the contents of them, but it does so stupid-fast as you type. You’ll usually find your file with a few keystrokes, and Google fans will appreciate the boolean operators that enable and/or elegance. Definitely an app you’ll want to right-click and create a keyboard shortcut for. There’s also Locate32, which does a bit more, is portable, and has more user-friendly features—we just like Everything for its single box that searches, uh, everything.
8. DisplayFusion or UltraMon
If you’re rocking dual, triple, or even quadruple monitors at home or at the office (and, let us just say, lucky you on that last bit), these apps have a relatively small system footprint, but make a big impact in how your system looks. They both manage separate or split wallpapers across multiple monitors, and can grab and rotate images from your computer, Flickr, or other sources. With DisplayFusion’s recent update, they also both maintain your Windows taskbar across all your monitors (or don’t, if that’s how you like it). Our resident multi-monitor enthusiast Jason still keeps both apps on his system for the little things, like multi-monitor screensavers in UltraMon, but both are among the very select paid apps we’ll admit to being worth shelling out for (although both have restricted “free” versions as well).
7. Texter
I know, it’s like we never give up on promoting this, right? Well, what can we say—we (the royal “we,” really) wrote it because it filled a need in our half-breed lives of alternating text and HTML. Turns out, though, that folks ranging from power emailers to military writers have found dull, boring text they can automate, misspelled words to catch on the fly, or perhaps powerful, seriously secretive acronyms they’d occasionally like to spell out. For less than 2.5MB of RAM on most systems, this one packs a pretty hefty punch.
6. Revo Uninstaller
In a magical world without computer stress, we’re all running virtual machines to try out software we might not want, and we simply uninstall it there, keeping one system nearly pristine. For the real world, Revo Uninstaller scrubs an application and all its traces off your Windows system. It can also turn off programs that are starting up with Windows, and uninstall applications with a crosshair “Hunter Mode” that doesn’t require you to know what it’s named.
5. NirSoft’s password recovery tools
Nir Sofer has contributed a wealth of great applications to the Windows world, but his Lifetime Achievement award for free software could be granted on his password utilities alone. Need to share your network password, but haven’t actually typed it in forever and a day? Network Password Recovery to the rescue. Need to unlock an Outlook PST file? Hit up PstPassword. Nir’s got you covered for email clients, IM apps, and, for every other app in your system that you can only see asteriks for, Asterisk Logger. Use them with the light side of the geek Force, and you’ll owe Nir a beer after he saves your unlucky day.
4. CCleaner
With good reason, this tiny, powerful little app has remained our readers’ favorite Windows maintenance tool. With a few clicks, it guns through your web browser remains, Recycle Bin, temporary system files, registry, and unnecessary application left-behinds, clearing them out and, in some cases, freeing up at least a DivX movie’s worth of space. It also offers a startup program analyzer and disabling tool, and can be run on a schedule for that light, regular crap-free feeling (ew, but good, right?)
3. Process Explorer
Windows Task Manager isn’t a bad tool, necessarily, but it only gives you a layman’s view of what’s eating up memory or pulling serious CPU cycles. Process Explorer expands on the vagueries of “rundll” or “svchost” with a double-click, links background services to applications, and points to the folders they come from. You might not need it all the time, but when you’re rooting around and trying to free up system memory, it’s like a finely-tuned metal detector.
2. Replacements for built-in Windows utilities
There are a lot of good reasons to keep on rockin’ Windows XP, but some of the built-in utilities can feel a bit, well, dated—and that goes for a good number of Vista tools, tool. Notepads without tabs? A Paint app that can’t really resize or undo more than one action? Skip the headaches and work-arounds and run down our list of power replacements for built-in Windows utilities, almost all of which are tiny litle buggers that do their work a whole lot better than Windows’ own stuff. This editor, for instance, tries not to think about what file copying was like before TeraCopy came along—or, if he does, tries to keep himself calm about that 4GB transfer that failed out for no reason, overnight.
1. Rainlendar
If you feel like you’ve heard this one before without really knowing why, you probably saw it listed as the best calendar application, or listed as one of the tools used to create a Featured Desktop. This customizable little guy gives you a floating, tiny, yet informative calendar on your desktop, along with a to-do list. It integrates with Outlook, Google Calendar, and most other iCal-supporting scheduling systems. The full app with offline Outlook, GCal and shared calendar support costs €10 (or about $14-15), but could totally be worth the price for anyone who doesn’t like to have to open a browser, or flip up Outlook, just to see what’s going on Monday.
These are really Nice and Perfect Utilities. Hope you like this Post and try to use some of these Awesome Softwares.
Don’t forget to Post Comments !! 8)
Resize Your Image Files without Stretching Them
Well Guys, I’ve got something NEW for Y’all right now !! 😉 8)
We all are very fond of Collecting Images (Photos or Wallpapers) from Internet. But sometimes it really happens that we get those Images in small or big pixels/dimensions. So therefore, we don’t get the Images of our desired Dimension.
In order to somewhat resize them, we try out the ole school methods. 😛
Using MS Paint or similar kinda utilities, we either by changing their dimensions or stretching the whole Image. If we try to do them, we get some kinda Stretched (while Increasing their dimensions) and Compressed (while Decreasing their dimensions), making the Image completely very bad and ugly looking. 😛
I know you would say Adobe Photoshop would do it for sure. I agree, it really does this task. But somewhere I found that even Photoshop, though capable of re-sizing the Image to somewhat extent is unable to produce a good Image Quality while resizing. 😛
So, Regarding this thing, I’ve founded such Softwares which are capable of Resizing Your Images (Increasing/Decreasing the Pixels) without stretching the Image, and therefore making it as it was in its Original Dimensions. So You can get a separate Image file with changed dimensions/pixels. Now This is somewhat bit useful Fellows !! 😉 😛
- Photo Resizer Pro 3.9 :- This Software is simply The Best Image Resizing Utility I’ve used so far. It simply creates and saves a Separate Resized Image file , with a changed Pixel/Dimension of the Original Image File to another Folder. It’s very simple to use. It has other embedded features like:- Cropping , Enabling Effects, Embossing, Red Eye Reduction etc. etc. 😉
- Picture Resize Genius 2.9 :- It’s a very nice Image resizing utility. It typically meant for resizing purposes only. It has some default Dimensions for resizing the Image. Like the above, It also has other special utilities, which gets Open in different Window. It also creates a Duplicate file with similar picture quality while Expanding the Dimension. However, It has certain problems while contracting the Image Dimensions as the Image gets unrecognizable (kinda blurred i must quote) after the whole transaction.
- Resize Multiple Image Files Software 7.0 :- It’s very compact kinda software, with less Options and Buttons. It’s typically also meant for resizing purposes only. It gives you an option either resize by percentage or resize by selecting Pixels (either manually or choosing one form the list of Default Dimensions in a Drop-down Menu).
Download Resize Multiple Image Files Softwares 7.0 Software
Well, The following is actually an Image of a GRAFFITI and My Current GRAVATAR at My BLOG. I’ve just resized the above firstly, by expanding and then, by contracting its Dimensions and Pixels.
Take a look on the Images fellows !! 😉 8)
Image with Original Dimensions (403 X 500 pixels)
Resized Image with Expanded Dimensions (1000 X1241 pixels)
Resized Image with Contracted Dimensions (175 X 150 pixels)
As you could see that The Image has been resized to Large and Small Pixels. But the Image is neither looking blurred or ugly. 😉 So It’s Cool, Isn’t it ?? 😛
Well, There are a many Other Image Resizing Softwares like – Acronics True Image Home 13.0, Wallpaperio PSP Maker 1.0, Resize Images 1.0, Instant Stretch 3.0, Quick Photo Resizer 2.6, Resize Your Picture 4.2 etc. etc. ,which works like the above Softwares I’ve mentioned so far.
Well, Y’all could even Download and try them out as well. 😉
Rate and Send me some reviews on this post regarding this issue.
Addiozz !! 😉
10 Free Screencast Software To Make Video
Heyy Guys !! Wassup ?? 8)
I guess you’ve seen many Video Tutorials of whatever things you wanna visualize. Looking them a lot, Damn Sure !! You get so fascinated by it that you also want to create your Own Self-Made Video Tutorials like them. Isn’t it Folks ?? 😉 😛
Well Guys, they simply just use Screencast Softwares,where they can record their own Desktop View and give us Tutorials regarding any problem.
Even I was also like you days back ago. I’ve seen many Video Tutorials, where we get someone’s Desktop view and that person try to teach us. I got the same fascinating shit like Y’all are having right now.
So therefore, after browsing so much about these type of softwares and trying many of them. There are quite a few free screencasting applications which you can use without burning hole in your pocket. I’ve now A List of 10 Free Screencast Software To Make Video, which are as follows :- 😉
- Jing Project is the best free application ever made for screencasting. Jing Project has been created by TechSmith who incidentally also own Camtasia and thus you can be rest assured of the quality. I have been using this application since last few months and I am yet to face a single glitch. Jing is available for both Mac and Windows. Jing has recently undergone some changes which have improved its functionality and the user-interface. It is definitely not as feature rich as Camtasia but you shouldn’t forget that it’s free and does the basic task very well.
- AviScreen is another free screencasting application which although is not as refined as Jing but a try can be given as it saves the screencasts in .avi file type which is compatible on most systems. It has a smart feature called “follow the cursor” which lets you capture a video of relatively small dimensions while covering all mouse activity over the whole screen area. The major drawback of this one is that it does not record audio. Windows only.
- Copernicus is the free screencasting application for Mac which also doesn’t support audio. It can be used for taking screenshots while it also does the basic video capturing quite well.
- xVidcap is a pretty classic application which also doesn’t support audio like the two applications mentioned above. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The screen capture is actually done by saving each frame as an individual image – this is then sent through a transcoder which produces a complete MPEG video file.
- Windows Media Encoder is also a free application which can be used to capture both live and prerecorded audio, video, and computer screen images. The recordings are made in Windows Media format and can only work on Windows Operating Systems. Similarly Windows Movie Maker can also do the job.
- Camstudio 2.0 is an open source application and like Jing Project, it can also support both audio and video. It produces screencasts in .avi file type which it can also encode to .swf file type. It also includes features like adding captions and videi-in-video.
- Screencast-O-Matic is an online web service which provides you to make screencasts. It requires JAVA in your computer in order to run. Since it’s a browser based app so you can run it on any Operating System. It can record your desktop as well as audio.
- Wink is the last free application that we could find capable of making screencasts. It is a cross-platform application which captures screencasts and the feature of adding explanation boxes, buttons, titles etc. further make it worth a try.
- CaptureFox is a Firefox extension which can let you capture screen and record your sound. It makes the recordings in .avi file type while you may adjust its video quality as well. Free.
- Cankiri is a free screencasting application originally made for Linux in Python. It can although work on other Operating Systems too.
Well, Some of above are the Best. While few of them lag behind due to their certain drawbacks. A Tip Of Advice, I would like to share that, “Prefer that software which is most compatible as well as most in your Desktop”.
If I have missed any free screencasting application then please tell us in comments.
Adiozz !! 😉 8)
Ash Bee Zone 