This evening I discovered that VMware has a free virtual machine player for Windows and spent some time setting things up. One thing lead to another and I found myself putting together a two-part tutorial series on how to set it up.
Part One: Overview of Virtualization and Installing the VMware Player

Part Two: Setting up a Virtual Machine

I’ll expand on this more tomorrow, but it’s late now.
In the meantime here are the links referenced in the videos:
VMware Player: http://www.vmware.com/products/player
Appliance Library: http://www.vmware.com/appliances

In a post entitled “Linux green activisits unite!” ZDNet discusses the upcoming Installfest for Schools initiative being held by LinuxWorld and Untangle this August 4-7.
As ZDNet explains:
Volunteers at the tradeshow will install Linux and open source software (including Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox, OpenOFfice and more) on donated and recycled computers from the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. Most of the models will be Pentium III systems with 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20-gigabyte hard drive. The whole shebang, which could be up to 1,000 systems at the end of the …

Here’s a really interesting idea courtesy of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet (“How to … install Ubuntu 8.04 on a USB flash drive“).  In the post he outlines the process of how you would go about preparing a USB flash drive to run Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
What this means is you’d have the ability to carry a portable operating system with you wherever you went.  All you’d need to use it is a physical computer to plug in to that would recognise the USB Flash drive and whose BIOS supported booting by …

I just had a major ah-ha moment with regards to the utility of Linux workspaces.  If you’re not familiar with workspaces, here’s a background.  Workspaces are a way to preserve your valuable monitor space through the use of a series of different concurrent desktops.  When you have multiple applications open, you have the opportunity to allocate one or more of them to a unique workspace and quickly switch between the two using CTL + ALT + Left/Right Arrow keys.
Up until now I’d seen this as a potentially useful feature, but …

I’m currently in the process of upgrading Ubuntu on my primary machine from Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron and thought I’d chime in with some upgrade commentary while the 2 hour download process is underway.
So far thanks to the upgrade tool the process has been extremely straightforward. By selecting System –> Administration –> Update Manager and then Check For Updates I was informed that a new version of the distro was available and by clicking upgrade I was taken to the upgrade tool.
Beginning with some general …