So, for quite some time now, i’ve been interested in trying out a decent linux distribution. I’ve tried quite a few and so far, they’ve all been much the same to me on the outside. This is probably just not true at all as i’m sure all of them have their excellent advantages and disadvantages however, i have yet to find one that i find super easy to use and just appeals to someone who uses Windows Vista in the workplace on a daily basis and Mac OS X Tiger at home. Someone like me.
Well recently, i found just that: gOS. gOS stands for ‘Good Operating System’ and is basically a Linux distribution with an interface not too dis-similar from Mac OS X (probably why i liked it the most). It’s a nice clean, snappy interface with all the basics built right in and includes dock items for most of the Google applications that you could ever require. This includes Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, YouTube, News and Maps among others. It also comes standard with Firefox and Skype which is nice. Like i said before, i’m sure lots of Linux distros have these ‘straight-out-of-the-box’ features too but i haven’t come across them yet, or at least haven’t come across them as well integrated as they are in gOS. Some people nickname gOS as Google Operating System and i can see why.
With that short intro over with lets get on with testing it.
So i run VMware Fusion on my iMac and it’s fantastic software and obviously enables you to test out basically any OS you could want without having to have a test computer. It’s dead easy to set up a Virtual Machine in VMware Fusion and gOS is no acception. About 30mins after i downloaded the disc image off of the gOS website (which is at Version 3 or ‘Gadgets’ at the time of writing this), i had installed it as a Virtual Machine and was playing around with it.
There was however, 1 problem. VMware Fusion incorporates a set of tools (called VMware Tools) that gets installed on the guest OS after it has been setup to maximise your hardware and get the best from your graphics card, mouse, keyboard and any other peripherals that you may have setup on your host OS. It’s basically a set of device drivers but they work with any OS. Well almost every OS. gOS, is a little different and so and at first, i couldn’t get VMware Tools to install. This is partially due to the fact that when setting up the Virtual Machine, when you tell VMware Fusion where to find your OS, whether it be on a CD or a disc image on your harddrive, it automatically reads the media and detects what type of OS you want to install. It then fills in the gaps in your installation for you and gives you an optimal setup from the word go. Very cool and saves a lot of time configuring the guest OS and settings in VMware Fusion after installation. When i was installing gOS however, it didn’t know what OS i was trying to install and so categorized it as the generic ‘Linux – Other’. This meant that when booted into the OS after installation, it could not install the VMware Tools package. After all, they can’t cater for every-single OS in the world, that’s just asking for too much. So what to do? Graphics were a little slow and the nice multi-directional scroller ball on my Apple Mighty Mouse didn’t work at all.
The trick, is in what Linux distro gOS is built from in the first place. Luckily in this case, the ever so powerful and security concious: Ubuntu (version 8.04.1 to be precise).
To get VMware Tools to install, you need to change the OS from within Vmware Fusion to be ‘Ubuntu’ and not ‘Other’. To do this, go to your List of installed Virtual Machines (‘Window’ > ‘Virtual Machine Library’) then right-click on your gOS installation and click ‘Settings…’. Then on the new window that appears, underneath the screenshot of the OS, it will say what you called your guest OS earlier in the installation process (in my case, ‘gOS 3 Gadgets’). Beneath this, will be what ‘type’ your OS will be. You need to click this and change it to Ubuntu (Click on the drop down arow > ‘Linux’ > ‘Ubuntu’).
Great. Now turn off your runnign copy ofgOS (if it’s already running) and start it up again. Don’t jsut do restart as i’ve found this to now work everytime.
Now when gOS is up and running again, lauch the Terminal (go to ‘gOS’ menu in top left hand corner > ‘Accesories’ > ‘Terminal’). The type ‘sudo aptitude install build-essential’. Hit enter or type yes to proceed when it asks. It might also ask you for your password for your local user account for gOS. This is normal. This will basically install the neccesary build packages for you to compile the VMware Tools software.
Now go to VMware Fusion and go to ‘Virtual Machine’ menu > ‘Install VMware Tools’. Press install on the box that appears. It will then mount a disc image on your gOS desktop. What you want to do, is go into this image by double clicking on it and then right click the folder within that and extract it to your desktop. Now go to the Terminal again and type ‘cd Desktop’. Then type ‘cd’ and then the name of the folder you just extracted (in my case ‘vmware-tools-distrib’). Now type ‘./vmware-install.pl’ and let it do it’s thing. You may have to tap enter quite a few times and if it says that it might not be compatible with your system and that continuing might not be recommended, just type yes and enter all the way through. It might seem like it takes quite a while and that it is repeating itself however, this is normal, it does take a little while but it does not repeat itself.
After the installation is complete, restart gOS and hopefully all is well. Things should feel a little snappier and things like the scroller wheel on your mouse should now work if it didn’t before (mine did!).
Any questions/suggestions/additions, please leave them in the comments.
Thanks.