The LBox - Your Linux-Playground
Some people are intimidated by the seemingly unlimited amount of damage they could cause to their Windows-installation when they install Linux. In my opinion, this danger is not big at all, but there are people who are not comfortable when trying out Linux on their working machine.
This is why we created the LBox.
The LBox runs under VMware and simulates a regular PC inside your computer. You can run it in Linux or Windows, and you will be able to try out everything without danger to your production machine. You can partition the virtual drives, reconfigure the bootloaders on the virtual MBR’s or do other ‘dangerous’ stuff. And if you completely wrecked the virtual machine, just start over with a new one :)
This is how you use the LBox
- Download and install the VMplayer for Linux or Windows (http://www.vmware.com/download/player/) or even better: Download and install the VMware-Server for Linux or Windows http://www.vmware.com/products/server/get.html). You need to register to use the server, but it is free of cost and you can build you own virtual computers with it. No need to follow the steps below, which have caused some confusion :)
- Details on installing VMware-Server on Ubuntu can be found on Ubuntu Tutorials
- Download and unpack one of the following, depending on how much RAM your virtual PC should have:
- Virtual machine with 64MB of RAM - ZIP-file or tar.bz2-file
- Virtual machine with 128MB of RAM - ZIP-file or tar.bz2-file - for real PCs with 256MB of RAM
- Virtual machine with 256MB of RAM - ZIP-file or tar.bz2-file - for real PCs with 512MB of RAM or more
- If you have other wishes for the size of RAM, you can edit the .vmx file with a regular text-editor.
- Put an Installation-CD into your drive (/dev/hdc). Any distro you want to try out.
- If you are using a different location for your CDROM drive, you will need to edit the .vmx file in the folder for your virtual machine. For example, if you are using Windows, you will need to change it from ‘/dev/hdc’ to something like ‘D:’ or whatever the drive letter is. This is also true for the floppy:
ide1:0.fileName = "/dev/hdc"
floppy0.fileName = "/dev/fd0"
become
ide1:0.fileName = "D:"
floppy0.fileName = "A:"
- Run the LBox in the VMplayer
- Have fun!
Audio explanations
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Welcome to LinuxBasics.org - The online community that helps people to get Linux installed and running.
During this tour, we will guide you through our website, which has many facets which wait to be explored
The biggest project we are running is our Linux course, based on the LBook.
The book is stored in wiki-format, which enables us to update and correct it as we go.
Discussion for the course is on our Forum
Our mailing-list is for any Linux-related question.
The questions and answers from the list are stored in the list's archives in order to help others with the same problems.
Every weekend, we meet to chat in IRC. These meetings are NOT mandatory, but are a nice chance to get to know each other better.
IRC is also a great tool to solve many problems, since it is very quick and easy to ask for more details if you need them.
The tutorials are one of the oldest sections on the LBo-website.
Here you find explanations on how to do specific tasks in Linux. Many of the tutorials were created after a certain problem
has been discussed (and usually solved :) on the mailing-list.
The tutorials are categorized in
In the links section, you find outbound links to other valuable resources.
One of our later additions to the site. We maintain a mirror of the Linux Documentation Project. This is our contribution to the "home of the HOWTOs"
Another later addition is the LBlog which focuses on how to do stuff on the Linux Desktop. It begins with the basics on installing Ubuntu.
Using the integrated site-search, you can search the tutorials, the LBook and all other wiki-pages
Simply type the search term into the box in the upper-right corner of our webpages
As a community, we depend on your feedback and collaboration. So, if you have something to share with others, please contact us. If you have a suggestion for a topic you would like to see covered here, please add it on the Wishlist.
There are many ways to contribute: You can answer questions on the mailing-list, you can write a complete tutorial or just a step-by-step documentation on how you completed a specific task using linux. Ask questions if the information on this site is not clear, tell us if we got something wrong, spell-check our writings, whatever.
We are looking forward to meeting you at LinuxBasics.org
Anita, Jisao, Sam and Stefan