Google Chrome OS is finally available for downloading as a VMware image (.vmdk) from gdgt. Although the recommendation is to use VMware Player or Fusion to run it instead of Sun xVM VirtualBox, VirtualBox seems to work much better than VMware. The main issue experienced when using VMware Player is the lack of internet / network connectivity at the end of setup. The VM does not seem to have network connection even though “Bridged Networking” is selected as recommended in the gdgt discussion forum.
After hours of struggle to get it working, I finally decided to try VirtualBox and voila !! it worked the very first time. I did not have to change a single thing. Not even the network settings. It worked perfectly fine with ” NAT”.
So, here are the steps:
Hardware : HP 6510b Laptop
OS : Windows Vista Enterprise
Application : Sun xVM VirtualBox
1. Launch Sun xVM Virtual Box. (I am using v2.0.2)
2. Click New & then Next
3. Select a name for the Virtual Machine & then select the OS type. You can set the OS type to either “Ubuntu” or “Red Hat”.
4. Set the Base Memory Size in the next window. (I set it to 512 MB)
5. Next is the Virtual Hard Disk selection window. This is where instead of creating a new one we use the existing .vmdk file downloaded from gdgt. Click on “Existing” & the Add the virtual hard drive. Click Select.
6. Click Finish
Select the VM on left and click “Settings”. Click on “Network” & you can find Adapter 1 type is set to “PCnet-FAST xxxxx” and attachment type as “NAT”. Leave the settings as it is. It worked fine for me. Change the settings here only if the default settings do not work for you.
Based on different models of laptop/desktop & the type of ethernet adapter on the motherboard there might be instances where this selection might not work. You can then change the network settings to a different adapter type & check. For me, no matter what adapter type I selected “NAT” worked.
Here is the video of the setup
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWgFtgZqYzM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]
