I have been trying out Virtual Box on Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit and it rocks! Installing an XP guest on the Ubuntu host, the software is very fast and flexible. You can run the VM in any mode that you want, headless (like VMware server or ESX), connect via RDP, ( YES, they have their own RDP server the “normal” workstation way or seamless mode to impress you boss.
There is an extensive choice of network cards, going from the PCnet 32 to the e1000. Their documentation is very comprehensive. Cherry on the pie they have a Debian package!

What do you mean by “I cannot serve up images.”? The software is so flexible, I am sure you can do what you want to do with it. Let me know …

Jeremy

Can I ask though - how did you get this picked up and into google news?

Very impressive that this blog is syndicated through Google and is it something that is just up to Google or you actively created?

Obviously this is a popular blog with great data so well done on your seo success..

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Another former Levana employee | Apr 8 2008 9:39AM GMT

Hello, I am a former Levanta employee who was also laid off recently. Michael Perry’s comments above on the company’s management style (”You simply cannot run the company like its your personal kingdom”) are sooo true.

As another example of the general approach and attitude of the senior management there, I think everyone there vividly remembers the absolutely nightmarish experience during the time a Swiss guy be the name of Beat Knecht ran the marketing group a few years back. Since then, this name has become synonymous with apocalypse and nigthmare throughout the company. Although he is just one of several examples, he clearly stands out. He not only thought he was above the laws of space and time, as quoted above, he actually thought he was as good as god. In reality, he was the most arrogant, condescending jerk people there have ever met in their entire lives. He was delusional and completely out of touch with reality. For example, at one point he wrote a memo to the entire company on a change in direction of the company. It came completely out of the blue; nobody was prepared, not even the CEO. When he was done sending the email, he walked around the office, and just said, “I (!) have now re-programmed the company,” and then left to go home — at three in the afternoon. We were all shocked. The email contained “instructions,” group by group. Until then, I didn’t know that employees were there to be “re-programmed” by HIM. Was it the team? No. Was it the leadership who ran the company? No. Was it the CEO? Nope. It was HIM who dared “re-programming” us all via email. We all thought this was absolutely hilarious. Just hilarious, but also very sad. He obviously though he was some kind of Jesus whose mission was to save us mere mortals from the evils of this world. At the end, we all had to laugh out loud in total awe and disbelief. What a moron. We wanted to tell him that it may be a good idea to take a communications class, but then we decided that this would do more harm than good.

That night (in true setuid form) I wrote an 11-page position paper on the positive and negative effects of blogs on image and marketing, how they should be used, how they can be misused, and so on.

I went through their partners and competitors and showed how they were using blogs, and compared and contrasted each implementation, as well as how the OSS community has been using blogs for years.

I’ll see if I can clear it with IBM and send you a neutered, sanitized copy. I was told that it ended up being the blueprint for how blogs were deployed within IBM to the public.

It was definitely a moving document and opened the eyes of quite a few non-technical folks who thought “Blogs Are for Kids”.

If I hadn’t worked at Linuxcare I’d never have created and founded Smoothwall. Because of Linuxcare I refused $23m of VC money and founded entirely on revenue and ongoing profit and by doing so made more money in year one than both Linuxcare and Levanta ever banked. Eight years on with over 400 commercial partners and multimillion pound revenues it still dwarfs both Linuxcare / Levanta and unfortunately Sputnik which I had such great hopes for (and still do).