virtualisation software

[gaurav10]

hi
can sumone pls explain to me how virtualisation software like VMWare and virtual box emulate a Linux environment inside windows or vice versa?

[Freston]

Different packages take different methods. But in general terms, an Operating System is tricked to believe it's the only OS running on the system. You can read more here for starters.

[oz]

You can find additional info about virtualization on the vmware website:

Intro to Virtualization, Virtual Machine, Server Consolidation - VMware

[jmadero]

I have VMPlayer in Ubuntu for XP (I use it for one purpose, and one purpose only....Netflix on demand, but I've been told this may not be needed for much longer...) okay back to the question:

basically what it does is it creates a single file which it allows the OS to think it's an entire partition (it's called a vmx file). So as you add programs to the Virtual Machine that file grows and grows to whatever you set it to be (you can set it as big as you want I think). A couple drawbacks to it:

1. Typically speaking you aren't going to become a "good" linux user with this method....this is because at first it's a "cool addon" but for most people it just because another piece of software that isn't used often enough to get comfortable with the OS

2. There are a few things that wont' run (3d rendering I believe is one, so I don't know if you can use Compiz (the cool cube and stuff) within VM

What you might want to try instead is to dual boot, this way you get an option upon boot about which OS you want to go into. You can set it to where Nix is by default and then use Windows as needed (I'm assuming windows)