I have been interested in running Linux for a while, but since I don't have my own computer that I can do whatever I want, I've heard that you can run redhat as an emulator on windows. So, I'm asking if anyone else know how to do this? I read that it requires a partitioned drive. I have that already, but I wonder if there is an easier way.

Why is the title of this thread 'apache emulator for windows'?

You do not need to repartition your drive to use emulation, as all the guest (Linux) operating system's data stays in a single large file on the master (Windows).
Here are two emulators:
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

Be aware however that these can be VERY slow, and will not allow you to fully benefit fron Linux's capabilities. Maybe you should use a live cd instead. See www.knoppix.org .

VMWare is great as well though costly. Also, I noticed the name of the thread was 'Apache emulator for windows'. In case you are interested, Apache runs on Windows as well (actually does a great job of it on NT -- too bad NT sucks though).

sorry about the title. I was still thinking about the previous post I made here. Major screw up on my part. I meant Linux. Stupid. Stupid.

Yeah, I didn't think that a linux emulator running in my systray would be the best avenue. Speed is a real issue for me. How would it fair on a 2.8 GHz and 500 Mb RAM?

If performance is an issue, don't use emulation, it is much slower than a real computer.
Read http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/benchmarks.html
Qemu is 4 times slower than a real computer. Bochs is 270 times slower (this is an unfair comparison, as bochs was not designed for performance)
VMware is about 50-80% of the speed, but for a cost.

Still, with 2.8 GHz and 500 Mb RAM, QEmu may have a fair enough performance! Look at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ that's what they do.

Yves.

I have tried dsl with qemu on a similar computer, and, without being fast, it works. Still, don't expect graphics to go any higher than flubox or fvwm. KDE and Gnome won't work.
If you want to try Linux, the best way is a live cd.

Not stupid... just a mistake... continuing to use Windows after so much frustration... now that's stupid

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them. For those that don't use emulation here, (Most of you) which *nix is better, Gentoo or redhat? Or do you have a different flavour choice?

I use debian, but Gentoo is a very good choice.
Debian:
+ great package installation system
+ very stable
- You don't get the latest versions of software

Gentoo:
+ Packages optimized for your system, with only the components you need
- Time required to compile your own software, to give you an idea, on a P4-2.6GHz, a full install (with kde) takes about 30 hours to compile.
- Having to choose many compile options
+ Choosing many compile options
+ Gentoo installer
- Gentoo installer if you are a newbie (Hint: If you can't understand the installation manual, Gentoo's not for you)

RedHat/Fedora:
- Problems, just look at the number of problems reported in the Fedora forum, and at the reviews for Fedora
- rpm packages
- up2date is not up to date

Slackware:
don't know

Ubuntu:
don't know

SUSE:
+ for those who don't know anything about Linux
+ GUI configuration
- GUI configuration

Mandriva/Mandrake
- Super commercial
- Tries to sell you software that is free (don't tell me about 'free software' not meaning free of cost, I know. What I mean is that, to make you buy more expensive versions, Mandriva does not give you packages for many programs)
- few packages (see above)

Red Hat is aimed at the server and enterprise market, and is quite expensive. CentOS makes a good rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat 9 and below are outdated and no longer supported....not really a good idea to use them.

Fedora has a short support cycle, but is good for bleeding edge stuff.

Gentoo, you have to compile the entire system from source and it can take quite a bit of time.

Ubuntu Linux is also a good product. You might want to check it out.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 is capable of running Linux quite quickly on top of Windows. There is a free 45 day trial, so you could use that 45 days to test out Linux. Or there are also ways to make it so the timer never leaves day 1, but links to that are not appropriate for this forum.

I tend to agree with stefan_nicolau, except his rant on Mandrake/iva.

Mandrake (or Mandriva) has a good set of free repositories, though admitedly not as big as Debian's: there's Mand. official repositories, and PLF, and quite a few others, all easily configurable thanks to the easy-urpmi web tool.

And ALL that Mandrakesoft does is free as in beer, except what is not free software (proprietary drivers such as NVidia, demonstration software...); and among those, you can easily download those that are free as in beer though not free as in freedom.

Yves.