I never thought VirtualBox would be so AMAZING!

[TheNerdAL]

So I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3 and it works okay. A bit slow due to my CPU and Ram but it's okay for testing purposes. I love it! I might even test some other distros that I've been wanting to try out like Linux Mint! :P

I also would like to have Windows on there but I don't know if it's illegal to get it for free or not.

[Dustin2128]

I also would like to have Windows on there but I don't know if it's illegal to get it for free or not.

It is illegal. Anyway there are a wealth of free OSes you can use, gentoo and the BSDs in particular are disastrous if you screw up in the install process on your physical machine. Virtualized, you have nothing to worry about. Also: MS hates you installing their OSes in virtual environments. Xp should be no problem, but I think vista and 7 try to break compatability.

[Sporkman]

Also: MS hates you installing their OSes in virtual environments. Xp should be no problem, but I think vista and 7 try to break compatability.

Win7 64bit installed fine for me in VirtualBox. It didn't like it when I paused the machine & resumed it a few days later though - its piracy alarm got tripped & I had to re-enter the product key.

[TheNerdAL]

Hmm. I might buy Windows XP then and use it in VirtualBox. Is there a guide to doing this? :P

EDIT: Wow, Windows XP costs about the same as Windows 7. D:

[Dustin2128]

Win7 64bit installed fine for me in VirtualBox. It didn't like it when I paused the machine & resumed it a few days later though - its piracy alarm got tripped & I had to re-enter the product key.

Yes, but if you have trouble with registration- you got screwed out of 200$ for the license. I think they do actually officially discourage virtualization.

[Sporkman]

Yes, but if you have trouble with registration- you got screwed out of 200$ for the license. I think they do actually officially discourage virtualization.

Virtualization was mentioned explicitly the EULA however - said it could only be installed on one physical machine or one virtual machine instance, or thereabouts.

[earthpigg]

win7 works perfectly in VirtualBox without any modifications, hacks, or workarounds.

EDIT: Hypothetically.

[linux18]

if ram is an issue try using a compressed ram swapdrive like I am, it works great for virtualization.

http://code.google.com/p/compcache/

you have to compile from source, but if you are running 64 bit I can compile a deb package

[NMFTM]

Also: MS hates you installing their OSes in virtual environments. Xp should be no problem, but I think vista and 7 try to break compatability.
At my school we run two instances of Server 2008 and one of 7 using VMWare as apart of our networking and SQL Server classes. Besides the problems inherit to running dozens of VM's on a server that is IMO underpowered for the task with only 512MB of RAM allotted to each VM, everything runs fine.

Also, Microsoft is pushing their Hyper-V technology as a benefit of using their products. So if anything they're encouraging virtualization.

[linux18]

At my school we run two instances of Server 2008 and one of 7 using VMWare as apart of our networking and SQL Server classes. Besides the problems inherit to running dozens of VM's on a server that is IMO underpowered for the task with only 512MB of RAM allotted to each VM, everything runs fine.

Also, Microsoft is pushing their Hyper-V technology as a benefit of using their products. So if anything they're encouraging virtualization.
but only if the virtualization has the microsoft $tamp of approval

[earthpigg]

why are we still talking about this?

Win7 works perfectly in VirtualBox. Want a screenshot? :D

[murderslastcrow]

Microsoft has a Server OS, huh? Sounds uninteresting. Then again, I guess it would be nice to run Photoshop on a server for no apparent rea...

http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=17

I stand corrected.

[renkinjutsu]

Yes, but if you have trouble with registration- you got screwed out of 200$ for the license. I think they do actually officially discourage virtualization.

I thought MS contributed code that was to be merged into the kernel to improve the virtualization of MS Windows using Linux as the hypervisor... Or was it the other way around?

[murderslastcrow]

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/the-linux-distillery/26395-microsoft-contributes-to-linux-kernel

It's for Linux distributions on top of a Windows Server. Although I too hoped it would be the other way around. It's basically to satisfy their corporate users and keep a piece of the pie. Not sure how well it would work, though, since there's nothing keeping people from having two servers instead of one with Windows. Meh.

[Khakilang]

Its the other way around. Microsoft want to be dominant in the computer market. So they are not happy when you run Window 7 in a Virtual box.

[KdotJ]

So I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3 and it works okay. A bit slow due to my CPU and Ram but it's okay for testing purposes. I love it! I might even test some other distros that I've been wanting to try out like Linux Mint! :P

I also would like to have Windows on there but I don't know if it's illegal to get it for free or not.

I'm glad you managed to get it working :-)
Virtualization is really amazing and I have 5 distros installed that way ... Maverick, Fedora 13, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Windows XP. Each of them work great, and with the snapshot feature I can mess up eveytying I want to

[TNT1]

Its the other way around. Microsoft want to be dominant in the computer market. So they are not happy when you run Window 7 in a Virtual box.

Why?

I'm still buying a license for windows... They don't have a vm specific version of any desktop OS, so I pay full price to get any version of windows desktop os in a vm. What do they lose?

[linux-hack]

I might even test some other distros that I've been wanting to try out like Linux Mint! :P


Linux Mint is a rely good distro and I advise you to try 'it out. It is 100% compatible with ubuntu but more pretty in my opinion :p

And yes it is illegal to get windows for free...

[bigseb]

Hmm. I might buy Windows XP then and use it in VirtualBox. Is there a guide to doing this? :P

EDIT: Wow, Windows XP costs about the same as Windows 7. D:
I run XP in virtualbox and seems to work fine. No graphics driver for virtual OS's so graphics are sucky but if you don't need it then that no prob. performance takes a knock too. 1 core for host OS, 1 core for guest OS. RAM I split 50/50.

I wanted to run Rhino and Alibre in vbox but alas... performance. Hopefully when I get my new PC come December then that'll no longer am issue.

[linux18]

I've got something a little better than virtualization, chrooting
I've chrooted to an xubuntu 6.06 live cd (it's for a project you'll see in my sig soon)
then I used Xnest to create a separate x display an ran xfdesktop & xfce4-panel &
now I'm running xubuntu alongside ubuntu with just 1% more cpu load. I could run dozens of them!

[Bachstelze]

I've got something a little better than virtualization, chrooting


Apples and oranges...

[samalex]

VirtualBox is pretty awesome... I run Win XP virtually on a few systems plus being a student I downloaded Windows Server from DreamSpark and am running that as well. I think there's some hacks to even get OSX running on non-Apple hardware, so that I want to figure out.

But on a night when you have little time, choose 3 or 4 operating systems (even if old) and try to install them -- like MS-DOS 6.22 (then WFW for fun), Haiku, OS/2, etc. Those old operating systems are fun to play with, and most will run in VirtualBox with some tweaking.

Sam

[NMFTM]

But on a night when you have little time, choose 3 or 4 operating systems (even if old) and try to install them -- like MS-DOS 6.22 (then WFW for fun), Haiku, OS/2, etc. Those old operating systems are fun to play with, and most will run in VirtualBox with some tweaking.
I bet normal people go to parties or clubs to meet girls on nights they're bored.

[samalex]

I bet normal people go to parties or clubs to meet girls on nights they're bored.

Normal people also have families and kids, so most of my unwind 'nerd' time is late in the evening when the house is quiet. And in times like this, such projects like playing with legacy or lesser known operating systems can be fun. At least it is for me :)