Once I had a practical, if slight, reason for having a Linux system around. That was when I was writing a manual for Guiguts and wanted to be able to try it out in Linux as well as Windows and OS X.
I no longer maintain the manual but I had the virtual machine (VM) set up under Parallels and every week or so would fire it up and run the package manager to update it.
Then Ubuntu released version 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon") and it was supposed to be a big upgrade. Perhaps it had fixed some of the minor annoyances? I ordered a CD when it came, sat down to install it into the VM. Unlike all previous virtual installs, which had moved along flawlessly, this one flailed and flopped. Endless chatter about it on the Parallels and Ubuntu user forums. Something about the emulated video adapter causes the software to mis-configure the screen.
I've spent maybe four hours futzing with it, trying the different things people say worked. I even downloaded an evaluation copy of VMWare's Fusion, a different hypervisor product, to see if it would work better (it failed differently but still failed). All for a system that I don't really need. Why do I waste my time this way?
