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Thread: Complete imitation of hardware

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Beans
    10

    Complete imitation of hardware

    Hello. I have been using Ubuntu for three months and I love this OS. However, I still have it installed into Windows file system via Wubi. Now I think it's time to make a full installation alongside Windows. However, I don't like messing so much with computer because that's risky, especially if for some reason I need to uninstall Ubuntu and keep Windows working properly. Because I'm a careful person, I decided to try doing all these actions in an emulator first. But I don't know what emulator to choose. It seems like many of them can only run specific operating systems. But if I understand correctly, emulator which completely imitates x86 hardware should be able to run any software designed for x86 with no problems and no need to adapt it to any OS. My question is, what emulator would you recommend me to test risky things and get accurate results?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Beans
    566
    Distro
    Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

    Re: Complete imitation of hardware

    Try Oracle's Virtualbox, it's fast and has a lot of features. It is the closest to native speed out of all emulators and virtual machines.

    Here's the website: www.virtualbox.org
    Say no to Microsoft. Say yes to open source.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    North Vancouver
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Edubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    Re: Complete imitation of hardware

    If Wubi runs on your machine, then a normal install will run the same - Wubi only virtualizes the disk, the hardware access is direct.

    On the other hand, anything you do in a virtual machine does not show how Ubuntu will run on your machine as there is a layer of hardware abstraction there.

    If your issue is installing/uninstalling - then the only thing you need to understand is that Windows requires the Windows bootloader. So after installing Ubuntu as a normal dual boot, when you want to uninstall it, you'll need to reinstall the windows bootloader first (and this is incredibly simple), before deleting/reformatting the Ubuntu partition. That's it.

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