I haven't played with Ubuntu in a couple years, and I am wondering how far it has advanced. I would have done a text search of my question (there's probably an answer somewhere), but didn't know what text to search for.

Virtual Machine ?

And then I thought about what was more likely, that Ubuntu would learn how to run itself under XP, or how to run XP under it. I'd like to start learning Ubuntu again, but don't want to set up multiple boot, grub, etc....

So is there a way for me to run Ubuntu from within (or under, I don't know the correct terminology) Windows XP (Pro, 32-bit)

Thanks in advance,

Johnny

http://wubi-installer.org/

enjoy!

I appreciate the link to "wubi", and it's interesting to learn that there is now a way to install Ubuntu from within Windows, so thank you for that.

However that is not the same thing as running Ubuntu under Windows, as in Virtual Machine. It's nice to know that I can install Ubuntu from Windows, but I could do the same thing from CD, the REAL problem/trouble is that when you are done with one you have to REBOOT to get to the other.

THAT is what I am trying to avoid.

As you rightly pointed, you could run it in a virtual machine. You could use VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

U can also use VMWARE_Workstation...
http://www.brothersoft.com/vmware-wo...oad-64353.html
Once you will install this tool, u can install many OS including Ubuntu through that. Just go thru the Guest os installation instructions for ubuntu...
http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/ww...tml/wwhelp.htm
Hope it helps!
-pratap

(An aside, no "multi-quote" function on this forum software ?)

Thanks for both answers. I'll spend some time looking at both of these options. I'm wondering if there is one that is clearly "better" for me and my possible uses.

First, my intent is to set-up a convenient way to flip into (and out of) Ubuntu in order to learn how to use it; to duplicate the routine tasks that I normally do in Windows, with the ultimate objective of getting away from Windows completely.

I do off-site computer repair, so there are hard-drives (and other hardware sometimes) being installed on my desktop for diagnostic/troublshooting & repair. I run a variety of disk scans, and am currently in the process of building a system specifically for this purpose. That will be it's primary reason for existing; everything else I do with this computer will be secondary to that. Quad-core, a lot of memory, minimal video processing, etc...

1) Is one of these better than the other for these purposes ?
2) Can I expect a performance improvement by doing them in (pure, not VM) Ubuntu ?

Thanks again,

Johnny

I'm doing the opposite to what you want to do: I'm running XP Pro in VirtualBox on Slackware, and I can say the performance is just as good as a "real" installation of XP Pro.

I am not sure what you mean by "there are hard-drives (and other hardware sometimes) being installed on my desktop" so may not be answering your question and I only know VirtualBox but ...

A VM is provided with virtual HDDs. An OS running in a VM works like an OS running on real hardware; that is what OSes are written to do. Thus the virtualisation software provides virtual HDDs for the VM. The data storage used on the host for these virtual HDDs may be

• host system files: virtual disk image (.vdi) or VDMK.
• host system whole HDDs or HDD partitions, known as "raw hard disk access”.

The guest OS may also mount network files systems from the host (or elsewhere). In the case of an ubuntu guest running on a WXP host, Samba may be used on ubuntu to mount a WXP share.

VirtualBox provides "Guest Additions", software running on the guest OS to extend its capabilities to suit running in a VM. These capabilities include:

• re-sizeable video display (to allow the guest screen displayed in a host window to be re-sized).
• copy-and-paste buffer shared between host and guest so (text only) may be copied in either direction.
• "Shared Folders", providing a shared folder (directory in Linux-speak) without the need for network file system software.

Hello Brian

Me too but, on the rare occasions when I run WXP natively on the same hardware, it feels significantly faster than when running in a VirtualBox VM.

I'm not running the "real" and the virtual XP on the same hardware. The "real" one's on my laptop (Intel Pentium Dual T2330, 1.6 GHz; 1 GB RAM). I've given the virtual one the same amount of RAM as the "real", but I've a faster processor in my desktop (AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 2.8 GHz; 4 GB RAM) - no idea if that would affect performance.

Given what you say here, I would think you're better off doing it the other way round, as I did. Use Ubuntu as your main system, with XP in a Virtual Box. This way, you can use the multiple desktops on Ubuntu to flip in and out of XP.
In my case, I use Lightroom almost all the time. This, and one of my printers, can only work under XP or Mac, so I have XP open in a box on its own desktop where I can flip in and out to my heart's content, using the faster safer Ubuntu for all my web connections and file transfers. I've seen no loss of speed using XP this way.

Just an opinion...