Virtual Machine Questions

[MR ZenWiz]

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 7:10 PM, Bill Stanley <bstanle at wowway.com> wrote:
> I have run VM's on another platform (VirtualBox onOpen Suse) but I wasn't
> very successful and I am not very experienced with them.
>
> 1.  I see VirtualBox OSE in sthe Ubuntu software repository.  Is that all I
> need to run a VM?
>
Technically, yes, but you also need access to installation media for
the machines you wish to install.

> 2.  My processor is an i7-860 with 8 Gb of RAM and has harware support for
> VMs.  I know VirtualBox can use the hardware support.  Do I have to install
> anything else (in the kernel) to enable hardware support. I am using Ubuntu
> 10.10 - 64 bit.
>
No.

> 3.  There are a lot of OSes supported by Virtual Box but all of them need OS
> installation disks.  I do have a Win-7 install disk but the installation of
> that VM was buggy and had network problems.  I would like to try Win XP but
> do not have an install disk for that.  I have a Dell machine but Dell gave
> me no install disks with that computer.  Even if I had a disk it would not
> install on anything other than a Dell machine.  I guess this question is...
> How can I install various OSes?
>
As I said above, you need the installation media.  If you want to put
Windows in a VM (excellent idea) you still need to have media for
that.  I run WinXP in VMs on two different desktops - one on VMWare
Workstation and one on VirtualBox (both licensed).  They each (VMW vs.
VB) have ideosyncrasies.  What I like least about VB is that it
occasionally chews up a lot of CPU outside the two I allocated for use
in the VM.