Statistics Open For All

VirtualBox is brilliant.  You can set up Windows XP, Ubuntu Jaunty etc and test installations into them.  Then reset to snapshot and rinse and repeat.  Installing onto systems that are not “clean” is never as certain – perhaps you have already installed comtypes or whatever.

One tip for sharing files between a host OS and a Linux (Ubuntu) guest OS (see http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/VirtualBox_Shared_Folders).

Within the guest OS, make a directory e.g.

sudo mkdir /transfer

Then mount the shared folder you set up externally in VirtualBox using:
sudo mount -t vboxsf sharename mountpoint
in my case:
sudo mount -t vboxsf transfer /transfer
It is then easy to grab files from the host OS e.g. a deb package that needs to be installed.

I have just watched a fascinating video entitled “Why Desktop Linux Sucks” by Bryan Lunduke (http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-desktop-linux-sucks.html).  Desktop Linux works really well for me but Bryan makes a lot of important points.   I certainly agree that packaging is a big problem.  The approach I have taken for Linux installation with the SOFA Statistics project is to only release a deb package aimed at Ubuntu (http://www.sofastatistics.com/downloads.php).  I am already spending a lot of time packaging as it is and would like to spend more time developing new features.

I have made some more revisions of SOFA Statistics (bugs fixed, mainly regressions after refactoring).  Launchpad makes it easy to see every difference between the different versions.   http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-p-s/sofastatistics/main/revision/5 Truly, nothing is hidden which shall not be revealed!  These are very powerful tools, all made available through the power of open source.