[Staffslug] Virtual machines

At the LUG meet in January, we discussed virtual machines with Qemu and VMWare. I've now got both running on my Ubuntu 5.10 box, so I thought I'd post some useful links & notes. Qemu runs under Linux and Windows (although I think the Windows port is generally slightly behind the Linux version). Installing on Ubuntu is as simple as using Synaptic, apt-get, aptitude or whatever to install the "qemu" package, and any dependencies that it needs. On Windows, you just need to download an installer and run it. One potential advantage is that you can emulate a different processor, so you could, for example, run MacOS in a virtual machine on your x86 box. Downloads, documentation etc is at: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/ VMWare now offer a free-as-in-beer "VMWare Player", which will allow you to use already-created images, but it won't create hard drive images. As far as I know, it only emulates x86 processors, unlike Qemu. This is available for Linux and Windows, and can be downloaded from: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ I haven't tried it on Windows (I suspect it's a standard installer). Instructions on getting it running on Ubuntu is at: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=84275 Both Qemu and VMWare use "disk images" which are basically big files that the emulator uses as a hard drive. The VMWare player won't create a disk image, but Qemu can create VMWare-compatible disk images. The link above includes instructions on how to do this. Finally, some screenshots. Everyone loves screenshots ;-) Windows 2000 in VMWare & Windows 98 in Qemu, both running on Ubuntu: http://www.phillipsuk.org/tmp/vm.png http://www.phillipsuk.org/tmp/vm2.png Just to see if I could, I installed Qemu on my virtual Windows 2000. It worked. Below is a screenshot of DamnSmallLinux running in Qemu on Windows 2000, which is running in VMWare on Ubuntu: http://www.phillipsuk.org/tmp/vm3.png Finally, a simple screenshot of Windows 2000 in VMWare on Ubuntu: http://www.phillipsuk.org/tmp/vm4.png If anyone is interested in this and wants some more info/help, give me a yell, but bear in mind that I'm new to this myself. Russ