VM experiences

[Sean Carolan]

> 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 asked for "client-based" but even virtualbox has some daemons that 
run in the background, so you might consider using the free VMWare 
server.  You are *very* tight on RAM though, so I'd recommend using xfce 
for your desktop environment so you will have as much RAM as possible 
free for your VMs.  XFCE will run comfortably in 128MB of RAM, which 
would leave you 384MB say for a WinXP or Linux guest VM.  Also make sure 
you disable as many unnecessary background services as possible.  The 
"sysv-rc-conf" package is an easy way to do this on Ubuntu.

> 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.

Go with the free vmware server.  It's solid and has a proven track 
record, and is fairly easy to install on Ubuntu.