Virtual Spanners
Sometimes, thankfully not often, things just don't work out. Take tonight for example, having worked out all the details in my head, I decided that I'd have a go at creating an Ubuntu respin. I planned on using VirtualBox to set-up a new installation of Ubuntu and customise it for a new laptop, arriving soon via Santa.
It all started well, I set-up a new virtual machine and booted the Ubuntu LiveCD, no problem there. However, when I tried to install Ubuntu I came across my first problem; with a screen resolution of just 800x600 it's impossible to see any of the confirmation buttons at the bottom of the Ubiquity installer. I managed to fix this without too much effort, even so, it did make me wonder about how a less competent user would deal with the same issue. Having said that, according to my statistics only 0.74% of users run an 800x600 screen resolution, so maybe it's not such a big issue after all.
The next spanner that I encountered, the show stopper, was during the actual installation when my wireless connection continually dropped. Not only would it drop, which is very rare on this machine, but network manager would prompt me for a WEP key. I didn't want to risk losing my connection completely and so I aborted the installation.
As a workaround I think I'll create some physical partitions and work from a "proper" non-virtual installation. It would have been more convenient to able to create the respin on a virtual machine, but I think it'll be quicker and less painful not to.
Damn those virtual spanners!
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