The title of this posting says most of it: here’s a picture of a workspace on my current SunRay desktop:

Last week I installed my x4200 with Solaris Nevada build 90 – with the ZFS boot/root setup – and atop that installed SunRay Server Software version 4.0; then I installed VirtualBox version 1.6.2, and installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron in that.

This week, with Bart’s help, I enabled the “Guest Extensions” for the Ubuntu/Linux install, and this provided dynamic resizing of the screen, transparent mouse handling and other magic like that; then I installed Skype and FlashPlayer under Firefox.

I wasn’t really expecting it to work, but it’s 75% there – I can play videos on Firefox on Ubuntu on VirtualBox, the music plays, the video sync is adequate, the sound quality is good when using headphones.

The SunRay1’s speakers are crap, so you wouldn’t want to use them anyway.

Problems:

1. The microphone does not work; VirtualBox on startup makes some complaint about not opening the microphone, I have no idea where to start debugging this yet, have not had the time…
2. This affects Skype, obviously; I have made Skype test-calls but cannot say anything, I can only hear the remote automated voice. SkypeIM works fine.
3. For some reason when the headphones are unplugged, the sound does not automatically transfer to the speakers? I am ignoring this because the speakers are crap, as cited above.
4. When playing a YouTube video in Firefox/Ubuntu/VirtualBox it is not possible to pause the playback; VirtualBox is only consuming 40% of a single core of the dual-core machine, however it is presumably so overwhelmed by I/O that it is incapable of handling events like clicking the “pause” button. Non-Firefox buttons get handled eventually (5 to 30 seconds later) but it is clearly a VB-being-busy problem.
5. When Firefox/Ubuntu/VirtualBox is running, it seems to get an exclusive lock on the SunRay audio; I cannot play a YouTube video using Solaris-Native Firefox, while VirtualBox is open and talking to the audio device.

So, it’s not perfect, but it is really cool and worth sharing. I can now leave Skype/Ubuntu/VirtualBox running on my work SunRay for a 10% CPU hit on a dual-core box. That’s fine by me – one less thing to carry in on my cycle will be a Skype device, and Pidgin can do my other IM traffic.

Of course, what Bart, Darren and I are now planning is to connect to my home Macintosh using VNC+SSH on Maemo on QEMU on the Nokia N800 SDK on Ubuntu in VirtualBox in a Zone on Solaris under xVM on Solaris over SunRay.

But that’ll have to wait until we have an afternoon free…