>> I think the operative question is "how much of an expert do you need to
>> be to make this work?"
>
> That should have been your leading question, then. ;)

Well, it's certainly not as simple as just clicking a button. (Whilst it 
*is* literally that simple under Windows.) But sure, maybe there's some 
secret technique which makes it actually work properly...

>> Amusingly, I tried Ubuntu and it didn't work. I also tried OpenSUSE and
>> it didn't work.
>
> Version?

I don't recall that information off the top of my head.

I tried Debian, I *think* it was Etch.

I tried Ubuntu. I think I tried Maverick Meerkat, and I definitely tried 
Natty Narwhal. (But sure if I ever tried Oneiric Ocelot.)

I tried OpenSUSE, I believe it was 10.something, but I don't really 
recall anything further than that. (I suppose I could try searching for 
images...)

>> To be fair though, /some/ of these distros somehow "detect" that they're
>> running in a VM and install optimised video drivers. Windows doesn't do
>> that.
>
> Yes, some/many distributions use an open source version of VMware's
> tools, and in those cases, the VMware supplied package actively conflicts
> with the OST package (as I recall it's named).

I suppose that's not *so* surprising... although I would have expected 
either the VMware package or the open source replacements to have code 
to detect this and deal with it.

>>> Hmmm.  So, you say it doesn't work, but you don't know if it was
>>> running.  So how do you know it didn't work?
>>
>> Because I couldn't actually transfer files between the guest OS and the
>> host OS? That's more or less the only reason to bother installing VMware
>> Tools. (Other than the accelerated hardware drivers...)
>
> So, shared folders didn't work.  That's but one feature the tools
> provide.  As noted, they add accelerated (or more properly /optimised/)
> hardware drivers, and also some host/guest API integration.

I don't use "shared folders" at all. I just use the feature where you 
can drag and drop files between the guest OS and the host OS. Works fine 
for Windows, doesn't seem to work for Linux.

All it means is that for Linux, I have to use Samba instead. (Assuming 
the distro in question installs that by default. Installing it manually 
doesn't appear to make it work...) I suppose the really ironic thing is 
that Linux can connect to the host OS via SMB just fine, and yet a 
Windows guest OS cannot seem to achieve this feat. (??!)

> LPIC-1 is a starting point, but it doesn't cover a lot of depth.  I've
> held that one since 2003 myself.
>
> But remember that technical certifications are a measurement of the /
> minimally qualified candidate/ (and remember that I used to work in
> certification program development, so I do know what I'm talking about
> with it).

I gather that being Microsoft-certified has become something of a joke 
in industry circles. I'm wondering how much credibility LPIC actually 
has. (Although I guess that depends primarily on who you ask.)

Regardless, I may learn something interesting in the process. E.g., 
everybody knows that you can go through the Bash history using the arrow 
keys. But did you realise you can actually /search/ this? I had no idea. 
There's also half a dozen text-processing commands that I've never heard 
of. (E.g., "od", "fmt", "pr", "nl", etc.)

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