[Ham-Computers] Virtual Machines in non-virtual computers

[jeff]

I'm having a blast here.
I discovered virtual machines/appliances via the free vmware player.  It 
  installed with no grief on 3 of 4 computers (XP and linux).

I found a page with directions on how to do a virtual XP image, so now I 
have a Windows image to run under linux.

If you haven't played with this yet, dl vmplayer (it's free) and check 
out what it can do.  It is more or less a separate window in Windows or 
linux that runs a separate operating system.

I called in my boss, who is going virtually insane over virtualization, 
and showed him my 2 computers... linux was running under XP and XP was 
running under linux.  He was either most impressed or humoring me 
(either way is probably ok).

Practically speaking, you an run a different OS to test it out without 
having to muck up the hard drive installing it.  The image takes up 
precious little space so you haven't lost anything, but you have gained 
knowledge of a different OS.  You can audition different flavors of 
linux to see which you like better.

The other reason for vm is that you can use your dual-processor machines 
(or earlier) to run several things at once.

You can also get prebuilt images that do one job, like an Instant 
Firewall, spam blocker, and other assorted goodies.  Linux is free, 
vmware player is free, and they both run on Windows or linux.  Once you 
make an image, it will play on vmplayer under any OS.  [WARNING - the 
stock XP build image is about 1.2g]


Have fun!



-=-=-
... Jeff for President - Skull & Bones wouldn't let him in!
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