Sometimes Windows is fundamental ..

Long time, no see updates. But I applied some changes to my life and also traveled a lot 😉
I also built a new PC. Yes. A desktop-PC. In 2015! I didn’t do this for years, but now the black cube is running (so fast and still cheap ..) and powered by Linux Mint 17.2 MATE.
It took just one day to find out, that there is still software which is neither available for Linux nor runnable via wine. Yes, you can install and start it, but then it will immediately crash. Nice.
So my first thought was the good old fashioned dual boot-idea with several partitions on the harddrive. But since the SSD-space is limited and I didn’t want to attach an additional (slow) HDD, I tried the following. And it worked! Almost out of the box. Therefore the post … it is nothing really complicated, but I am really surprised that everything went so smooth.

1. install virtualbox via apt-get (used 5.0 version from Oracle – base was 4.3)
2. torrent meanwhile a legal copy of Windows 7/64 Ultimate via WindRiver-Microsoft-distribution: used Transmission
3. create a virtual machine (at least 20 GiByte … not 10 like I did ;)) as VDI; assign processors, memory and disable the network (‘The only safe computer is a computer turned off’ .. computer science-prof); assign the ISO as CD-drive
4. boot Windows, select the 30 day-trial period; install Windows; shutdown
5. assign a shared directory to the virtual machine; put the installer of the software there
6. reboot VM; install the guest-tools there; install your needed software …

Additional hints:

• if the VM needs to be resized, then
  • vboxmanage modifyhd ‘/home/tanteedith/VirtualBox VMs/win7ultimate/win7ultimate.vdi’ –resize 20480
  • grab a gparted-ISO; assign as optical drive; reboot; resize the partition
• if you activated the fullscreen-mode and wonder how to return to the host: press “right CTRL + F”

Still: amazing. I spent 70 minutes or something. And it works!