Virtualbox 1.6 now supports seamless mode for Linux guests!

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Look at this!



I've installed Kubuntu in Sun xVM VirtualBox running on my WindowsXP host computer in seamless mode. As you can see, the Windows and Linux taskbar/panel both appear on the same desktop and their respective windows too!

I'm confused. What is new about this?

Or did the Windows host not manage it until now?

Okay, now I'm confused. What part of this have you seen before?

To actually answer your question I'll have to guess at what you mean now.

VirtualBox 1.6 was released May 2. Does that still count as "new" to you or not?

Do you understand the difference between the guest and the host OS? Seamless mode was previously available for Windows guests but not for Linux guests, so you could have had a Linux host running a seamless Windows guest, but not the other way around, and you would still have had a mixed Windows/Linux desktop kind of like in the picture.

Now with version 1.6 seamless mode is available for Linux guests also. In the picture I have a windows host and a Linux guest. You couldn't do that before.

Do you understand what seamless mode means? Originally, to use a vm, you had to "capture" keyboard and mouse input and render the entire guest desktop inside a host window at a fixed resolution. It was awkward to switch between applications on the host and guest because the whole desktop comes with it, so all the windows from the other OS either disappeared or were obscured. With seamless mode and mouse integration this situation is much improved. The guest desktop itself is no longer rendered, so it doesn't obscure your host application windows. You can simply click on individual windows to switch between them as normal regardless of whether they are guest or host applications!

Were you not even talking about VirtaulBox? It's true that you can install KDE on Windows. It's also possible to use coLinux to run Linux apps in Windows, or even Cygwin to compile them for Windows.

The difference is none of these things are as easy to use or as contained as VirtaulBox is. I just think that it's cool that you can do all this so easily for free.

Have I guessed the right question yet?

I'm not sure how long I've been using VirtualBox.

The earliest backup vdi file I seem to still have is dated 29/9/2007, so that would be at least version 1.5.0 of VirtualBox. That was an XP guest.

I suspect I was using it back in January 2007, as that's about when Linux Format magazine first mentioned it. That would be 1.3.2, the first public version.

In October I've got a 64Studio guest and in January, one for Mandriva2008.

I suppose it hadn't occurred to me to notice whether seamless mode worked for the Linux guests. They would be a simple implementation, as they all use X and full source is available. I just assumed, I guess, that coping with the vagaries of Windows, with no source code, was the greater challenge.