A couple of showstopper input bugs
Posted: 17. Sep 2011, 19:54
With Fusion 4 being announced *without* 3D support, I decided to give vbox a try again. Mostly, I'm greatly impressed! VBox 4.1.2 on OS X 10.6.8 running Ubuntu 11.10 (beta 2-ish). I have a couple of keyboard and mouse problems that are preventing me from switching wholesale, and saving the $50 Fusion upgrades forever. 
Most debilitating is the inability to get right click working in the guest. This is a standard MacBook Pro, and under Fusion, the native OS X control+click is mapped perfectly well in the guests. However, in VBox, control+click does not right click in the Ubuntu guest. I have Auto Capture Keyboard and of course GA installed, but I cannot seem to get control+click to right click. I thought at first the problem could be related to my swapping capslock and control in the OS X system preferences, but I switched these back to their defaults and still it didn't work. This one's a serious showstopper.
In OS X command-h is the standard mapping to hide a window. I typically setup my Ubuntu machines (both native and virtual) to map Alt-h to window minimize. Under Fusion this works just like a native desktop, however VBox does not seem to pass command-h to the underlying OS. Even when I've got Auto Capture Keyboard set and Host Key set to right-command, but still hitting left-command-H causes OS X to hide the virtual machine window instead of passing that in. Another showstopper.
Fusion provides its own preferences to map option to super and command to Alt in the guest. VBox doesn't do this, and while I believe I can probably make that swap using xmodmap in the guest, it would be kind of nice if vbox provided some of its own native keyboard modifier remappings. Not a showstopper, just sayin'.
Most debilitating is the inability to get right click working in the guest. This is a standard MacBook Pro, and under Fusion, the native OS X control+click is mapped perfectly well in the guests. However, in VBox, control+click does not right click in the Ubuntu guest. I have Auto Capture Keyboard and of course GA installed, but I cannot seem to get control+click to right click. I thought at first the problem could be related to my swapping capslock and control in the OS X system preferences, but I switched these back to their defaults and still it didn't work. This one's a serious showstopper.
In OS X command-h is the standard mapping to hide a window. I typically setup my Ubuntu machines (both native and virtual) to map Alt-h to window minimize. Under Fusion this works just like a native desktop, however VBox does not seem to pass command-h to the underlying OS. Even when I've got Auto Capture Keyboard set and Host Key set to right-command, but still hitting left-command-H causes OS X to hide the virtual machine window instead of passing that in. Another showstopper.
Fusion provides its own preferences to map option to super and command to Alt in the guest. VBox doesn't do this, and while I believe I can probably make that swap using xmodmap in the guest, it would be kind of nice if vbox provided some of its own native keyboard modifier remappings. Not a showstopper, just sayin'.