Virtualisation explored
Posted by Simon Salvin on 29. Dec 2008 on PC, TechnologyEarlier this year I decided to create a virtual machine (VM) using an old Windows XP license. I used Microsoft‘s Virtual PC 2007, a free download and a great starting point. So the virtual machine is a virtual operating system within a host PC, I run Vista and have 2 virtual machines, XP and Ubuntu, they run within a window on the host PC from a virtual hard drive, a file on the host PC. The VM uses a standard graphics driver but uses the host machines network and sound cards and the CD/DVD drive. With an add-on aptly named "Additions" you can drag and drop items between each OS. The OS runs like a true OS, you need an official license key, it requires anti virus and updates. Its’s a great way to use software incompatible with a new OS, or to try out a Linux distro without having to have another PC taking up space, and the only limit to the amount of VM’s is the amount of disk space on the host. Remembering while running a VM it will use a chunk of the host PC’s physical Ram memory.
XP was an easy installation, straight forward, while Ubuntu was a little trickier, having to change a few lines of code to get the mouse working, it’s well documented via a Google search but not for the faint hearted.
I installed Windows 98 in a VM for a client as he required it run a series of language tutorial CD’s incompatible with XP. This worked as planned but over the last 6 months since installation the virtualisation of the sound card as been an issue. He contacted me recently to ask if I could solve the problem. Unsure of quite how to fix this I’ve turned to another VM program "VMWare player".
VMWare’s equivalent to Virtual PC 2007 is VMWare Workstation, unfortunately it isn’t free and at $180 not cheap for a hobbyist. Fortunately if you’ve already created your VM with Virtual PC then VMWare’s Free "Player" software will read the VM, just not create it.
When accessing a Microsoft VM for the first time in VMWare’s Player, the OS see’s this as new hardware and requires you to activate the OS again, otherwise it’s all go quite easily.
So far I’ve found the VMWare Player to be faster than Virtual PC, very stable with networking easily activated and the sound works without addition setting up. The mouse moves swiftly between VM and host PC, although as of yet I haven’t been able to drag and drop documents between the two. As I play a little more with it I’m sure I’ll find out how to enable that and I’ll write an update within the next week or two.
I’ve also just this evening downloaded the FREE open source VM software "Virtual Box", and with a spare XP license this might require a few hours to prepare both new XP and Ubuntu installations for testing. Again I’ll cover this shortly, but in the mean time if you fancy trying out an OS in a virtual world then head over to Virtual PC or Virtual Box for their FREE download and to Ubuntu for their FREE OS.
More soon………………….
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