gOS on VirtualBox

gOS or “Good OS” is an operating system based on Ubuntu. What makes gOS special is it’s “mac” like look and feel, out of the box support for google apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Youtube etc through a special mozilla application called prism.

gOS also provides skype, wine in the default installation. Since gOS is based on Ubuntu, ubuntu users will feel right at home when using gOS. All these facts prompted me to go after gOS.

I downloaded gOS after a lot of struggle from their website. They call the operating system as gOS gadgets which really confused me. Only after figuring out the size of the iso, I was convinced that I’m downloading the operating system. Also the website seems less informative and not well organized.

Keeping those things aside, let us quickly see how to install gOS as an guest in VirtualBox. Follow these steps to install gOS as a virtual machine in your VirtualBox:

Download the respective “iso” image from the gOS download site.

• Open VirtualBox, click “New” to add “gOS”as the virtual machine.
• Choose “Linux” as the operating system and “Ubuntu” as the version.
• Complete the rest of the virtual machine setup by giving appropriate details.
• Mount the gOS “iso” image in the CD/DVD ROM section of the new virtual machine you just created.
• Start the virtual machine and proceed with the installation.
• Once the installation is complete, boot into your gOS virtual machine.
• Once you boot into the gOS virtual machine, open the terminal and type “sudo apt-get install gcc make automake autoconf“. This will install the necessary build tools which is needed to install the virtualbox guest additions.
• Now click “Devices -> Install Guest Additions” to install the guest additions for this virtual machine.
• Once the guest additions are installed, restart your virtual machine. If the screen resolution of your virtual machine is still small, follow the steps mentioned in this tombuntu post and reboot your virtual machine.
• You can still go and configure things like “enabling smooth fonts” etc to make your experience with gOS pleasant.