>> My PC at work is barely powerful enough to run *one* OS, let alone 
>> two. It _would_ be quite useful for test purposes though.
> 
> That's one of the main reasons I went for a quad core with lots of 
> memory when I upgraded.

I can see how that would be the case. ;-)

>> However, the idea of being able to just plug in a USB stick and click 
>> an icon and instantly have a complete Linux environment set up exactly 
>> the way I want it is... pretty neat, actually.
> 
> You might have problems with IO speed if you do that. USB is a lot 
> slower than SATA.

Depends what you want to do. Running Damn Small Linux from a USB drive 
is probably *faster* than running it from a CD-ROM due to the vastly 
superior seek time. (CD-ROM drives typically have a horrible seek time!) 
Also, DSL is based on KNOPPIX and uses a cloop compressed filesystem 
image, so there's less data to shift (but more CPU load).

If I get bored enough maybe I'll benchmark it. But either way, it's a 
trivial matter to copy a folder off the USB drive and onto a spare 
folder on the local HD, run it for a while, and then just delete it when 
you're done. That's about the easiest install/uninstall procedure 
imaginable! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Gail wrote:
>  
> Virtual machines are soooo useful. I've been using them for some time to 
> test out beta software that I don't want breaking my machine, or to try 
> out things that I know are going to break stuff (hence the name of the 
> VPC in the picture)
> 

I use them at work, while one real server can easily hold up the work of 
3 smaller servers, and having only one hardware makes less heat, uses 
less power, costs less money and takes up less space.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:54:53 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild (dot) co
[dot] za> wrote:

>
>"Stephen" <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote in message 
>news:pmhlb49pho3518hld68ob2f0h600na7nk4@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:16:57 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild 
>> (dot) co
>> [dot] za> wrote:
>>
>> A new email address, Gail!
>> Have you started your new job yet?
>
>That's actually the email address related to my blog 
>(http://sqlinthewild.co.za) not a work address.

You have a blog dedicated to SQL? Is that so you don't use this forum for Haskel
Oops! Sorry Andrew :)

>I have started the job. Going slowly at the moment. Should be picking up in 
>a week or two. Lots of clients are currently 'considering what they want'

Yes, I understand. My new job (with Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water)) started off slow
then accelerated so that I've little time for Pov-ing. 
I hope yours goes well.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK, so I realise I'm probably about 20 years behind everybody else, but 
> seriously... this is THE coolest thing I've seen this year! 

I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but 
I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which 
virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:

> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but 
> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which 
> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

1. Go to http://www1.interq.or.jp/t-takeda/top.html

2. Download the zip file at the top of that page.

3. Unzip it somewhere.

4. Find an ISO image for a Linux LiveCD.

5. Do the following:

   qemu.exe -cdrom My_LiveCD.iso

6. Watch it boot up.

It's that easy.

(Actually no, it isn't. The path to the ISO image must contain only 
FORWARD SLASHES, not backslashes. Also, if the current directory isn't 
the QEMU folder, you must add the -L switch with the correct path so the 
emulator can find things like the BIOS image, keymaps, etc.)

The *home page* for QEMU is here:

   http://bellard.org/qemu/

But you have to hunt around a bit for the Windoze port. So I have you 
the direct URL...



If all of that is too much effort, go to

   http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

and download the "embedded" Zip file. This contains a .bat file that you 
can just double-click to start up Linux.



PS. If you want to "install" Linux rather than run off a read-only 
LiveCD, you can create a harddisk image using the qemu-img.exe tool. 
Something like this:

   C:\> qemu-img create Disk1.img 500MB
   C:\> qemu -cdrom My_Install_Disk.iso -hda Disk1.img

Now install Linux onto /dev/hda. Once you've done that, you can run

   C:\> qemu -hda Disk1.img

and you have a read/write Linux system. (Obviously similar steps work 
for *any* OS. Build an empty harddisk image, run the emulator with the 
install CD ISO image and the harddisk, install, you're done.)


My God... I sound like I know what I'm talking about! This morning when 
I woke up, I knew none of this. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> My God... I sound like I know what I'm talking about! This morning when 
> I woke up, I knew none of this. ;-)

Very nifty. Thanks very much!  I was going to try out the VM from 
Microsoft, but this sounds a lot easier to get working. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:

> Very nifty. Thanks very much!  I was going to try out the VM from 
> Microsoft, but this sounds a lot easier to get working. :-)

Yeah. Zero install. Unzip a file and you're ready to execute stuff.

As I say, DSL uses it to run off a USB flash drive. Stick the flash 
drive in, double-click, you have Linux running. Don't even have to 
reboot. Live CDs EAT YOUR HEART OUT! (OTOH, emulation is obviously just 
a tad slower...!)

Actually, I *think* you can even tell it to use your real CD-ROM drive 
as the emulated CD-ROM, if you don't have an ISO image but have a real 
CD... You can also do the same with your HD, but... uh... don't!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> CD... You can also do the same with your HD, but... uh... don't!

I'll have to see if I can make it run the Linux on the other partition, 
just to see. It could be pretty cool if I could get into my work 
machine's configuration for a bit without having to stop what I'm doing 
in Windows every time they want some free advice. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Gail wrote:
> 
>> Virtual machines are soooo useful.
> 
> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
> 

They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your real
CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.

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Darren New wrote:
> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but
> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which
> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
Windows host...

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