On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 22:22:00 -0700
wes <p...@the-wes.com> dijo:

>On Sat, Sep 16, 2023 at 11:02 AM John Jason Jordan <joh...@gmx.com>
>wrote:
>
>> >>> Normally release is done with the Right-Ctrl key, but if you're
>> >>> in the host and the guest has exclusive control of mouse and
>> >>> keyboard, you have no Right-Ctrl key  
>> >  
>> >>something is not right here.  
>>
>> I'm still stuck using the power button.

>one possible thing to try would be to connect to this system remotely.
>if you have set up ssh access, you can connect in and terminate the
>virtualbox process from the command line. it would be interesting to
>find out whether this returns everything to normal.

Several times over the years I gave tried to get ssh working, and I
always failed.

>I sort of doubt that the window manager really died - the existing
>windows should no longer display if that were the case. or at least
>you should lose some of the surrounding detail (title bars, clock,
>notification tray, etc).

Good points. Let me revise my theory: Window manager did not die
completely, but some piece of it died. 

But that has become more or less moot.The Debian installation was
always temporary to let me experiment to be sure I could get all my
applications installed. That worked out reasonably well; Debian has
snap in its repositories, so it can be added, but it's not installed by
default, and I got almost everything running. 

The hangup was the GUI config program for my Silicondust television
tuner on my home network. I got the program installed in Debian, but it
couldn't see the tuner. Yet I could ping the tuner from Debian. I spent
a lot of time trying to solve this, and in the process I finally
discovered a long thread in the Debian forums, where dozens of people
had the same problem, and all of them failed, and none of them were
running in any virtual machine. Reluctantly I had to bid Debian
goodbye. Yes, I could buy a separate television set and find a place
for it on my desk, but why? 

On my Xubuntu 22.04.3 I have managed to replace the few snap packages
that I had with apt packages, and my next effort will be to see if I
can completely uninstall snap. 

I also installed Mint 21.2 Xfce in a VirtualBox machine and got it
running. Like Debian, Mint makes snap available, but discourages
installing it. But Mint has the ugliest artwork of any distro, and I
can't bear the thought of having to stare at it constantly. However, I
can minimize the Mint window and restore it without problems.

I started this whole voyage because I have come to have a strong
dislike of snap and was looking for an alternative to Ubuntu. Assuming
that I found a good solution I was going to buy a 2TB M.2 card to
install in my Thinkpad in its second, currently unused, M.2 slot, then
install the replacement OS on it, leaving the existing 1TB M.2 card with
Xubuntu on it installed as a dual boot. I recently bought a Samsung 2TB
M.2 card from Best Buy at Jantzen Beach for $120 for my desktop
computer, and it is damn fast. 

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