[SLL] Running Ubuntu on MacBook using VMWare Player

[johnbaxterlists at mac.com]

Having learned about the free VMWare Player (for Windows and Linux)  
from last Thursday's (2006-08-17) "Security Now" podcast, I installed  
the Windows version into the WIndows XP I run on my MacBook thanks to  
Bootcamp, and downloaded the VMWare Corp supplied virtual machine  
"Browser Appliance" to run under it.

Browser Appliance contains an installation (somewhat modified) of  
Ubuntu, and starts up running Firefox 1.0.7 [Firefox 1.5.0 is also  
available].  I was able to send myself (and my boss and two co- 
workers) email using our webmail application, and do lightweight  
browsing.

So, Firefox running under Ubuntu running under VMWare under Windows  
XP on my MacBook using Bootcamp.  (Relatively indirect, compared with  
just using Safari.  ;-) )

The total time to get to sending the email message was about 1.5  
hours including manual reading.  The only glitches were caused by the  
fact that I was running this as my "normal" Windows user, but the  
Windows Live OneCare firewall can only be set to permit outbound  
connections by newly seen programs while running as an Admin user.

Fortunately, last week's Bootcamp update allows switching users  
rather than logging out and logging in (oops, "off" and "on") as  
older Bootcamp versions required.

I also heard the fan in my MacBook for the second time (the first  
time was when I installed the recent SMC Firmware update).

I'm impressed by how seamless the whole thing was (Windows firewall  
aside).

   --John