Virtualbox

Greg · Post by **Greg** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:26 pm

(HT to Chris.) I've been considering installing and using some kind of virtualization tool on my desktop for some time, but only recently decided to do something about it. For various reasons I decided to go with Virtualbox.

Some background. I currently only have 2 usable PC's (the lowest number I've had in 7 years), one dedicated server and one desktop. The server runs Debian stable- whatever stable happens to be, that's what I run. It's a rock. My desktop single-boots XP.

I've used Linux in various forms since the early 90's, and in the late 90's my desktop machine tended to dual-booted Win 9x and Red Hat 4.x. I wanted my desktop to have some kind of Windows availabl, for games mostly, but never wanted to spend more time in Win 9x than necessary. I haven't used Linux on the desktop since 2001. I'd been using Win2K at work and it was good enough, so when I built a new machine that year I went to single-boot Win2K on the desktop. When I built my current desktop, I went with single-boot XP. It's OK, but I'm tired of it. I still want to have Windows available for Office apps- don't need them often, but when I need them I *must* have them (SWMBO is adamant)- and for gaming. But maybe there's a way to reduce the maintenance burden.

Enter Virtualbox. Currently I'm running Virtualbox with XP as the host, trying out desktop Linux possibilities as guests. (This is important, because I no longer have spare machines to experiment with, and I'm done with the pain of multi-booting.) Anyway, it's going surprisingly well. Ubuntu's not bad, and it plays in to my Debian bias. This post is from Firefox on Ubuntu, while listening to Pandora and off-and-on playing a Flash game in separate tabs. Performance is fine. BTW, seamless windowing ROCKS.

When I make a final decision on a desktop distro to install and run as host, I'm looking forward to installing XP as a guest, getting the thing set up and setting the disk immutable. (oh, yes!) Apparently Steam and HL2 run just fine in Wine. Now I just need ATI to put out some faster Linux drivers.

For people running Windows who might want to experiment with Linux, by all means try Virtualbox.. It's very simple to install and set up, and you can mess around with as many other OS's as you like without messing up your current install. And for folks who want to run a real OS while still keeping Windows around (like stashing a crazy aunt in the attic)... it's perfect. All you really need is RAM.