Virtual Machine Questions

[Lucio M Nicolosi]

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 1:18 AM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

If VBox, don't go for the OSE release, it doesn't have USB support.

Get last release at:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

VMware has a feature that enables you to convert an actual install
into a virtual machine (no install CD needed).

Check:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

and

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/overview.html


-- 
L M Nicolosi, Eng.
Ubuntu AMD64
GNU-Linux Regist. User #481505 - http://counter.li.org/