I have 2 suggestions as the title eludes to:
1. It would be nice to have a console of available usb devices and just click to make detected devices available in a guest os.
I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 64bit and have XP and Vista as guest OSs. I also have a Nokia 9500 that I would like to sync with my computer. Since Nokia for some reason doesn't want to code a Linux version of PC Suite and my attempts and making it work with wine have failed, I thought I would try having virtual box make the data cable available to the guest and I just simulate what I do at the office.
I've tried schedule world and syncml which does work, but I'm getting someone else's information merged into mine...very frustrating...I'm about to just try and setup my own funambol server...
I only keep windows around is for 2 reasons. Gaming, but I don't have time for that anymore unfortunately, especially since CoD4 came out, and certain devices with windows only support, like CardScan. If I can get syncevolution functioning again I can pretty much keep windows in a vbox and only let it out for testing the web apps we develop since M$ believes in just making things up as they go without following standards but then how would they maintain control of their market share.
So I envision a simple wizard that maybe executes something like lsusb and just guides you through making usb devices available. All my efforts to make my data cable work in the guest have failed.
The next suggestion is really just taken from vmware and the failed frustration of configuring a working bridged adapter.
The documentation provided in the user manual totally messed up my networking. I finally got the bridging to work but it killed my wireless connection after a few moments :evil: but hey I could ping my host from my guest. and from my host I breifly also had internet access....for an unknown reason after about 15 minutes...networking goes away. I didn't have time to setup the iptables nat rules before my networking was hosed.
I would be nice if during the vm creation there was a simple wizard to say: yes use bridged ethernet instead of nat.
I had another problem with ubuntu...rather gnome network manager...for some reason creating a pptp vpn connection was functionality someone deemed I didn't need anymore...so I'm waiting for 0.7.0 that supposedly has so many fixes and functionality it can even cure cancer...really I'm not being cute this time it's in the headline at slashdot...
so I figured hmmm maybe I can just create a pptp connection from my vm and RDP to the office...wrong...that doesn't make it over NAT and as you can tell by now, my experience with creating a host adapter didn't work out the way I hoped
I would like to see a wizard that detects possible private networks not in use and in an obscure range like 10.200.1.0/24 create the bridge and adds any iptables rules that might be required to allow it to NAT out. may require incorporating gksudo to get permission to do this in an Ubuntu world.
This stuff should be easy in comparison to the amazing feats accomplished in coding this app. I hope this is well taken and included in the near future.
a long shot request would be figuring out how to get games like CoD4 working under a VM so when Wine, Cedega or crossover fail, we could just fall back to windows in a box =)
I'm sure getting access to the nvidia drivers (or ATI) would be hard and may be some hefty overhead...but if I could live in a linux world and not have to pray for game support that isn't coming for a long time...it would make windows not be my primary os.
As it is Vista spurred me into ubuntu. It's want it wants to be when it grows up. What an abortion that was, it's like they're beta testing on the public. I have complaints a mile long about that PoS
-Jon