virtualbox.org

I can definitely use a clearly written book on VirtualBox, EN ANGLAIS, por favor.

The documentation on VirtualBox on the VirtualBox web site is not clearly written, it is impossible to follow, and it sure isn't written in English. AND it was written for people who have an entire year with nothing to do but spend reading it.

Amazon has a half dozen books on Virtual Box. Any recommendations? It needs to have all the important details, clearly and concisely presented, and written in a readable style. Yes, that's, readable style. For us critters who think our vdi files belong on their own hard drives.

I don't need to be spending days realizing what the vbox file is! A good book might even compare and contrast in clear English the methods of backing up a virtual machine.

Thanks!

Yours,
Dora Smith

Dora,

Villandra wrote:The documentation on VirtualBox on the VirtualBox web site is not clearly written, it is impossible to follow, and it sure isn't written in English

Most (if not all) of us have managed to ... "get it". Just because you didn't, doesn't mean that the User Manual is for the trash. Au contraire! It's the number one reference actually that we turn to if we need clarification. Yes, that's right, I said clarification. That means that if our common thinking is "Dazed and confused"™, then the User Manual clears out the fog.

And you got to remember that the User Manual is not the Pope, it can be fallible. That's where the users, the community steps in, points to the mistake, mistake gets fixed. All in a good, collaborative spirit mind you...

Villandra wrote:AND it was written for people who have an entire year with nothing to do but spend reading it

I'm not sure that your unappreciative, cocky, offensive attitude helps. You *do* realize that this is a big project, right? You *do* realize that this is open source, right? You *do* realize that yours or anyone else's contributions are more than welcome, right? You *do* realize that in a community project you should act like a member of the community, and not as an outside, bad tempered critic, right?

You sound like a fairly new user to VirtualBox. Since you are expected to know some basic terms before we engage in a meaningful discussion, I would suggest to start by reading three small chapters from the User Manual:

• 1.2. Some terminology,
• 1.8. Creating your first virtual machine and
• 1.9. Running your virtual machine.

Or even better, read the whole chapter 1. First steps.

Villandra wrote:Amazon has a half dozen books on Virtual Box. Any recommendations?

Haven't had the need, but it looks that you might be looking for a book from the "... for Dummies" series. Not sure if there's one out there, never had the need to go anywhere beyond the User Manual.

Villandra wrote:I don't need to be spending days realizing what the vbox file is!

A day? Are you kidding me? People have spent months and years trying to get to the minute details. This is not your Pokemon game, this is a whole virtualized computer. If you think that this was a click-click operation, you got another thing coming.

Villandra wrote:A good book might even compare and contrast in clear English the methods of backing up a virtual machine

See? That's where it all boils down to. You start becoming "creative" on your first VirtualBox project. And you screwed up. Because you didn't even attempt to learn the basics. And your frustration translated to a User Manual lashing. Because it didn't include a backup procedure? Seriously now? For real? That's a *per* user, *per* setup procedure...

Start experimenting with throwaway VMs. Learn how things *actually* work, not how *you* thought that they *should* work. Your way of thinking is clearly different than those of the developers (and their customers, you're not one). Clearly one school of thought has got to change. You want to start betting who's going to have to learn and think different?

Moving from "Linux Hosts" to "Using VirtualBox", as this is clearly not an OS specific issue.