General question on Virtual Machines...

[Cantide5ga]

In Windows (XP or Vista) what are the drawbacks of having Linux operate through VM? Also, would I have to partition physical drives, or keep numerous distros on one drive with VM?

I ask due to past (failed) attempts to run multiple *nix, Windows, and DOS on one machine of dedicated partitions. Booting doesn't play nice, and I have tried it all. Could VM allow for my experimentation and give me the full *nix experience?

Concerning:
XP
Vista
MS-DOS
Debian
LunarLinux
FreeBSD

[apoorv_khurasia]

Virtual Machines are completely virtual. They do nothing permanet to your hardware except that if you install something it takes up your disk space. To run a VM all you need is a good amount of resources (RAM, powerful CPU and faster disks)., no partitioning etc needed. The VM will create a file on your disk and will use that as a virtual disk and all the "partitioning" will be done on this virtual disk (not on the physical disk). As far as you/(host OS) are concerned you see only one file and original partitions.

It would also be advisable to run a VM on linux (mainly performace, my personal observation) and install various OS on it rather than the other way round. But be sure that you do this only when your filesystem supports "large files". On windows you need to do this on NTFS (FAT32 wont support more than 4GB files).

As far as full UNIX experience is concerned no one can guarentee that a VM would let you experience this. Better try liveCDs. However if you have a powerful machine at your command you can get a better experience (better but always an inferior one). This also depends on the VM you use (VMWare, Xen etc.)

I hope this resolves your problem.

[Cantide5ga]

Thanks for the reply.

During install of any OS, it usually involves a file-system format of some sort. How does that work on VM's? Say I do pull off a VM on a NTFS XP of a ext3 Linux, how would that materialize?

[Thrillhouse]

During install of any OS, it usually involves a file-system format of some sort. How does that work on VM's? Say I do pull off a VM on a NTFS XP of a ext3 Linux, how would that materialize?

Not sure about other VM software but VMware will take care of all of that for you when you specify what OS you'd like to install. You can run ext3 Linux VM's on a Windows host and vice-a-versa.

[Cantide5ga]

My appreciations to you both.

I'll give it a go and will check back here in the case that others can provide some insight.