When I upgraded the dead computer a couple of years back, I stuffed the current machine(Dell Inspiron 545S w/Pentium Dual-core E5300 @ 2.6ghz) with 8GB of RAM, expecting to do some experimentation with running VMware or some such to tinker with PC based VM’s. Â After looking around a bit, other shiny objects attracted more attention. Â So, being easily distractable…..VM’s slipped down the memory hole.
Fast forward to present. Â Looking over at the Oracle VirtualBox website, a bit of light reading showed that a lot of work has been done on their VM software in the last 18months. Â More robust USB support, and a lot of bug fixes. Â Its free for personal use, so give it a shot.
The VirtualBox software itself installed on Windows 7 Â easily. Â Within a few minutes after that, A VM for an Ubuntu Linux partition was ready for the OS install. Â Virtualbox is able to install an OS from an ISO disk image. Â So after a few minutes waiting for the latest Ubuntu 11.10 version to download, the VM was ready to install. Â It took longer to download the ISO than it took VirtualBox to install the OS(unusually slow day for the internet connection to blame there).
The quick summary is that Ubuntu runs well inside the VM sitting on a Windows7 host. Â I expect that the opposite is likely to be a more desirable arrangement, but living in the real world, there it is. Â I expect to use the Ubuntu partition to allow tunneling over to the Linux server box using VNC to control the desktop on the remote server. Â Its possible to set that up using something like TightVNC under windows, but the whole thing is a lot simpler to configure in a Linux to Linux environment. Â The VM runs on the windows desktop just like another windows application. Â Nice and simple.
More complicated hardware interfaces are probably a lot more difficult to configure(if they are possible at all), but outside of some radio control software, I don’t expect to need to delve that deeply. Â I suppose there will be latency issues based on some comments from N4AF, but curiosity may eventually point me in that direction anyway.
Unrelated sidenote, but after installing the 11.10 version of Ubuntu, I immediately ditched the “unity” desktop and reverted to “gnome”. Â Another “Unity = new coke” example? ? ? Â [Comments appreciated on this topic]
A second VM is now set up with a small Windows XP partition using the Windows XP license from the dead desktop.  It turns out that XP was a bit more difficult to install.  The problems were probably due to hardware conflict issues between VirtualBox and the host over the CD-DVD drive.  After ripping  XP to an on-disk ISO, installation made much better progress.
It turns out the XP partition will be handy for running the version of EZNec I have. Â Later versions of EZNec have a 32 bit installer, but the last edition I have is using a 16 bit installer which will not work with 64 bit Windows 7. Â So now EZNec has a home on the desktop again, even if its inside a shell running on top of the shell. Â In fact, the EZNec install on an XP VM runs quite a lot better than I expected – much faster than on a P4 with 1 GB of ram.
So for some select older applications, an XP VM in the VirtualBox world is a viable option.  It’s a kludge, but potentially a very useful kludge.  Another very useful aspect is that the VM’s can be very easily copied.  Useful for backups and migration.  And always having a pristine version saved could be handy.  I’m tempted to start saving pennies for a multicore processor machine with the latest/greatest fast CPU’s and memory, and use a VM for everyday usages.  Also curious if running the VM’s over a Linux host OS ultimately makes more sense.
Latest-n-greatest is wonderful, but I just hate leaving behind programs that work perfectly well. Â CT anyone? Â OK, maybe not….
O’course the bleeding edge crowd will still descend into hysterics over the concept of “continuing to drive the 1984 Honda Civic”, but I figure they have enough cash in their pocket to not be concerned with the trivial expenses involved in their upgrades to all new replacement software.  If it were not just for a  hobby tinkering project, maybe I’d agree.
“Better” is such a subjective concept, aina?
One thing you can do with Windows 7 (edition >= Professional) is boot to a VHD. What this does is use the free Virtual PC from Microsoft to let you create a virtual machine and run it directly on the metal instead of having a virtualization layer between the “guest” and the “host”. Not sure how hard it would be to do with a Linux “guest” os, but it works very well for Windows. Here’s an article by Scott Hanselman about setting up Windows 8 that way.
Thanks for the link. Looks like a useful site.
Perhaps I didn’t read the documentation well enough, but I gathered the impression the Virtual PC was for win 7 pro only. I’ll go read some more…..
I considered the windows pro upgrade for that very reason, but that’s really the only feature I saw that I wanted. Not worth the premium extra expense. Most of the XP aps I use run under win 7. Funding for putzing around is limited…..
So far, no burning need to upgrade to win 7 pro. Besides, my opinion is that the xp compatibility should have been provided with the base win 7 OS.
Ultimately, I’d prefer to run VirtualBox on a Linux host, once I lay hands on a good surplus box with enough horsepower.