Ubuntu
Ubuntu bits and bobs:
in order to change the su password:
sudo su passwd
In order to install Beryl (the desktop manager) on a machine with an ATI Radeon card[1]
NB the Laptop R250 gfx card has too little memory to run Beryl in resolutions over 1024x1024 so you have to scale the resolution down to run Beryl, as it runs natively at 1400x1200.
To install VMware from source (NB After the installer fails, you install the vmware-any-any patch, then you go to /usr/local/src/vmware-server-distrib/bin and run vmware-config.pl) [2]
This is another howto [3]
These are the serial numbers:
9092W-Y06FF-2213H-4T4V9
9290R-YAPDU-28111-4VQ0W
9ATAR-Y8LFU-22M9M-4LL8H
9AT2W-YA7DC-2A491-4JNH1
9AE0T-YAQ4F-22J9N-4VP95
98DAX-Y86DC-22530-4LJUE
92XAW-Y824C-2AM10-4T008
90E2X-Y826G-20011-4VMLJ
92D89-Y0QFG-2A11N-4J5CH
92W2X-Y036A-2813N-4VHC8
(NB when running vmware it gave me shit about libpng, so I removed /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/ and it stopped giving me shit.
Then you can get around to putting your current Windows install into your VMware on Ubuntu [4]
This is a very useful configuration guide for the VMware virtual machine, if you want to virtualise an allready installed OS (especially the bit about the windows XP boot disk image, which stops you from having to go through Grub - use F2 in the vmware loading screen to change the boot order so that the CD starts up first) NB note that even though the SCSI driver gives an error, you still need it installed for when you start up windows using the VMware hardware profile in the virtual machine. [5]
This guy has another way to convert a current machine to a virtual machine on another PC
[6]
NB to addd the VMware tools you first have to cancel all the hardware warnings and then use VMware server to install the tools (under the VM tab).
In order to change desktop effects you do
alt-f2 (run), desktop-effects
In order to mount a windows ntfs partition read/write use this link [7]