VM experiences

[Scott Ehrlich]

I'm running gutsy which was upgraded from feisty via apt-get dist-upgrade.

I tried kvm/qemu, only to discover:

$ kvm -boot c xp.img
open /dev/kvm: No such file or directory
Could not initialize KVM, will disable KVM support
$

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 47
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 2188.869
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov 
pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 
3dnow up pni lahf_lm ts fid vid ttp tm stc
bogomips        : 4382.07
clflush size    : 64


It doesn't look like I have the vm flag to support qemu?


I then tried virtualbox-ose, and that simply likes to freeze at difference 
points along the install route, then the CPU load reaches a maximum point, then 
virtualbox reports it has aborted, and the system starts to return to 
operational use.

So what other free client-based apps are there to try?

You see the processor info above.  The rest includes 512M RAM and a spacious 
hard drive, but hard drive capacity is nothing if RAM, CPU ability, and 
sometimes video capabilities don't help out.

I'm not spending any money on virtual machine support.   This is for 
convenience and a good learning experience overall.


Thanks for any help.

Scott