computer question

[yinzerpgh]

Any computer nerds here?
I just bought a new laptop and I absolutely love it. Win10 pro.
I also have an old POS laptop that I installed Ubuntu years ago. I use the Ubuntu computer for all of my nefarious web browsing because it's less susceptible to getting STD's (it does BB unfortunately).

The new PC is way overpowered for what I normally do; email, check the news, pay some bills etc. so I thought why not create a virtual machine and install Ubuntu? I was able to successfully get Hyper V setup and installed Ubuntu 20.04.1 and all went swimmingly.
I then copied all of my nefarious bookmarks and passwords from the old Ubuntu to a USB drive and went to 'move' them to the new Hyper V computer...no joy. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get a drive mounted to the Virtual machine.
(Side note; I did find that I can take the USB drive 'offline' in Windows and mount it in HyperV and that might work, but, when I'm done, can I take the USB drive back 'online' so it's viewable in Windows again? It's a 1 TB drive and I don't want to lose anything that I have backed up on the drive).

The second issue is that I cannot get the Ubuntu VM to play audio through the computer speakers. I'm not very good at Ubuntu commands (I'm a 30 year veteran of MS) but can usually fight my way through it but this is above my pay grade.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[onawbtngr546]

I'm not familiar with hyperv. In all of my virtualization I've only use virtualbox or MS Virtual PC. Both of these have their own suite of integration tools that let you seamlessly use the clipboard and mouse input. It is usually in the form of its own iso bundled with the software.No clue on if it works with ubuntu though.


If hyperv supports it, you could use some kind of shared folder from the host (or even a network shared folder, from the host) to get the data

[Charley3]

Talk about a business need. A computer geek that helps sex workers and the men that see them get set up anonymously on their computer.
I tried to set up an anonymous twitter account and screwed up. Somehow my contacts were notified.

[thurman murmann]

Hyper-V can be a pain to configure newer OS’s. I’d scratch that and start over with VirtualBox. So much cleaner and lighter and you can install VB Guest Additions and that’ll take care of any drivers that weren’t installed to optimize the guest OS - audio, usb 3 etc. If you enjoyed Ubuntu so much you should actually install it in a dual boot so that you’ll be able to use everything as intended. You just choose which OS you want to start every time you turn in your computer.

[onawbtngr546]

Originally Posted by thurman murmann

Hyper-V can be a pain to configure newer OS’s. I’d scratch that and start over with VirtualBox. So much cleaner and lighter and you can install VB Guest Additions and that’ll take care of any drivers that weren’t installed to optimize the guest OS - audio, usb 3 etc. If you enjoyed Ubuntu so much you should actually install it in a dual boot so that you’ll be able to use everything as intended. You just choose which OS you want to start every time you turn in your computer.

The main reason I would avoid suggesting to dual boot is that it can mess with your main OS both in that it is running on the same hardware and not isolated (if you get a virus), and there is always the small chance of messing up your boot record

[blckstuff412]

[thurman murmann]

You can always save a copy of your MBR if you dual boot and just copy it back whenever you need to in a rare instance where you may encounter a malicious program that corrupts sectors of your HDD where any boot info may be written but if you want to keep it completely anonymous just boot up a live USB version of any Linux distro of your choice. That’s what i would do. Have a USB drive stashed somewhere and just plug it in when you need to and boot up that from your boot menu. You’ll still be able to save and what not. If you’re just doing some browsing I’d recommend Elementary OS it’s Debian based so it’s very similar to Ubuntu but not as resource heavy. Plus it has a nice MacOS like interface that you can configure if you’re into MacOS. I personally can’t use anything Mac related unless it’s official but hey I’m a Windows and Mac guy. You can easily change the MAC address on any network interface in Debian. Just open up a terminal, sudo then apt-get install macchanger and run it when you boot up your laptop. Really not that hard for a beginner plus a simple YouTube search will give you a step by step guide.

[DrivesAllDay]

Ok.... Now here's something I DO know about.


1st- The sound issue? Its a known issue with running Ubuntu in HyperV. I had the same problem.


https://askubuntu.com/questions/7535...ntu-in-hyper-v


2nd- USB= can I take the USB drive back 'online' so it's viewable in Windows again?

Yes. Hyper-V only allows 1 OS to have access to the thumb drive. By taking it "offline" first, you're removing it from Windows 10 OS, then finding it in Hyper-V to bring "online" for the VM.



FYI- if you want total security even from the NSA, check out VeraCrypt.
https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html

[yinzerpgh]

Thank you all for the help! I have spent countless hours trying to get it where it's at right now, so I don't necessarily want to start from scratch and/or create a dual boot scenario. I'm 95% there.
Thurman - so VirtualBox, that's basically a non-Windows freeware version of HyperV? Unfortunately it seems like it only supports older versions of Linux right out of the box. I'm not buying (or hacking) a paid OS to install on it, so are there any newer and free OS's that you would recommend to install? One that's relatively easy to use?


DrivesAllDay - I found that audio link as well and was working through it and kept getting bash errors. I'm in the IKETBD (I know enough to be dangerous) category. I can follow instructions very well, but interpreting them is a different story. At step 3 /tmp/pulseaudio* I was getting the error so I didn't get very far. Although a closer look at the additional URL might help me with xRDP. I'll check it out.
I'm also not necessarily interested in encrypting data; I have nothing to hide from myself (I'm a single guy living alone lol). But thanks for the tip!


Thanks again all!

[onawbtngr546]

Worst case, you can put windows 7 on virtualbox if you want to give that a shot.

[thurman murmann]

VirtualBox can be downloaded on Windows, Mac and Linux and yes it’s free and it basically the same type of program and Hyper-V. You can download and create a bootable iso onto a usb stick and actually install the OS of your choice to the usb stick and use it when you want.

[DrivesAllDay]

The only thing I hate about Hyper-V is, back in the days of XP/Windows 7, I was able to get 3 virtual servers/DCs and 4 clients running. Windows 10/Server 2016r2 just suck up SO many more resources.


Another useful program is Macrium Reflect. I use the free home-use version to make an image of all 5 of my SSDs once a month, then store those on an external drive.


https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

[tannana]

If you want to do something actually secure (running Linux to browse with is, itself, neither more nor less secure than windows without taking all your other habits into account), I suggest taking the old laptop and do nefarious browsing with tails. https://tails.boum.org Or, if your adversary isn't the wife using the computer, just browse naughty bits with the tor browser bundle and don't click on stupid things while keeping the virus/malware software current.


If you don't know how to dual boot the PC, don't. If UEFI and MBR aren't ringing familiar, don't do so twice.


On the hypervisor: Hyper-V sucks, but they give it away free as in beer. If you want something which doesn't suck, pay VMware for a copy of workstation. If you aren't hell bent on a full VM, there's the "WSL" bits in windows 10 (install it, ask for a copy of ubuntu from the MS store).


The number of truly good type-2 hypervisors for Windows client OS is pretty poor. Most of the QEMU stuff sucks, virtualbox is fiddly, Hyper-V doesn't do non-WSL integrated VMs well, and VMware costs money. If you must run VMs? Pay VMware the money.