I have been quite impressed by the stability and speed of my computer since removing Vista and installing various flavors of Linux. Sometimes, however, there is software that I want to run that is only available in Windows. For example, I maintain my aircraft systems and flight management knowlege by using a Windows computer based training application. My favorite audio editor is also a "strictly Windows" application that needs at least Windows XP SP2. One solution is to operate a dual-boot system, with Windows using one partition on my hard drive and Linux on the other. That does work, and that is how I computed for quite a while. Eventually, I began to feel that there was a bull in my china shop...Windows was occupying more space than I felt it should have on my system, and what I really sought was the stability, speed, and overall efficiency of native Linux.
Enter the concept of virtualization. Virtualization is essentially a means of using one operating system to run software (or a whole OS) native to another. Here are some things a virtual machine can do:
Consider the incredible flexibility available!. All one really needs is a way to translate the functions between operating systems. There are three different software packeges that will be discussed here, that enable multi-operating system computing: WINE, Virtualbox, and QEMU.
Continue for more on virtualization using
QEMU,
Virtualbox, and
WINE.
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