MaximumHoyt

   There have been several Linux distro releases in the past that claim to offer a MS Windows-like experience to woo new users to Linux, such as Corel Linux ,  Xandros Desktop , and Linspire/Lindows . These failed mostly because the commercial companies attempted to modify Linux enough to lock the users into their own walled garden. Interestingly, all these distros were based on Debian. A successful Debian-based distro is Canonical's Ubuntu . It doesn't attempt to strong-arm users into its walled garden, but does offer a few special things and a rich user and support environment. It's popularity is well-earned and spurred by its marketing. Zorin OS 18 is the latest entry into the fray and is a Ubuntu-based distribution , many calls it a "fork" since the UI is customized to mimic MS Windows. They do offer a free download ISO , so I attempted to install that in a VirtualBox VM. It hung up on my first attempt; problems with some LibreOffice packages, so I opted to N...

  I've been curious, so I thought I'd install Arch Linux in a VirtualBox virtual machine and see  what was up. I followed the well-written HOWTO by  Ankush Das , but was not very successful, not for his instructions, but from some glitch in the installer. It seems that none of the extra apps would download to install, so what I got was the minimal, non-GUI default installation. I was able to  manually install enough things to display the LXDE desktop (my favorite). CONCLUSION Maybe there's a problem with the USA repositories? This may be what's happening. I might try again selecting some other country. I found the text-based install very reminiscent of the RedHat 5.1 install that was my introduction to Linux back in the day. I'll wait until the repo bug is fixed before I try it again. RESOURCES Arch Linux homepage The EXCELLENT Arch Linux Wiki