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Virtualization Makes Running Linux a Snap

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Software

Many people love Linux but aren't able to commit to using it full time. Some folks use certain peripherals that Linux can't yet accommodate, while others need applications for which suitable open source options don't yet exist. Fortunately, virtualization makes it possible to put your favorite Linux distribution right on your Mac or Windows PC.

To virtualize a computer means to section off an area of the hard drive and put a second, fully-functional operating system on it, essentially turning one computer into two. Let's take a look at the various virtualization options to see which one might be right for you.

Mac users have a few different choices when it comes to putting Linux on an iMac or MacBook. Leopard, the most recent version of Mac OS X, comes with the Boot Camp virtualization tool built right in.

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Portability too

My "personal" personal computer is a 250GB USB disk from Western Digital, $130 at Costco and impressively fast. On it is a VMWare Pocket Ace package that I cooked up. 25GB; plenty of space. It contains PCLinuxOS. All my personal emails and documents and web browsing is done in this virtual machine. Because it's on a portable USB disk and includes VMWare Player for Windows and Linux, I can walk up to any Windows or Linux PC and be working in my own desktop in a minute or two. Speed is excellent, and security is superb. All my email traffic is encrypted, for example, courtesy of encrypted connections to my email providers, gmail and luxsci.com, so the host computer and ISP can't eavesdrop. Keyloggers are generally stymied by VMWare, too.

Coolness. Try it sometime.

re: Portability

You should write up a detailed howto on your setup.

Portability.

Sounds Good write it up. Take the credit and the article.

There are about a dozen ways to skin that cat but we should all learn. My private concern is not to use FAT so I can put a DVD iso on it (but how to do this with windows and linux targets) . Yes I forgot! I have a USB 500mb My Book (no hypen to drive Linux File Systems crazy).

Cheers John

Hasta Le Vista Baby!

Dual booting is a completely

Dual booting is a completely different animal (no pun on Leopard intended) then running a virtual machine. VM users must realize they are running two OS's at the same time,, a "host" machine and a "guest" machine. The user must have sufficient built-in memory for both OS's to co-exit.

For example, let's say a user has a machine with 1GB of memory. His (or her) native system is Linux distro "A". He sets up a virtual machine with 512MB of memory and installs Linux distro "B" or maybe Windows XP. All is well.

But what if the machine has only 512MB? Now the memory must be divided for two 256MB machines. Performance suffers.

And finally what if the base machine is 1GB but has Vista installed? You get DSL! That's not Damn Small Linux... it's Damn Slow Linux!!

Been there, done that, enough said.

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