Linux and Windows Windows and Linux
 

Welcome back gang,

I have a question out of pure curiosity. I know it's possible to run Linux through Windows via some virtual program (can you tell me what that program is, please?). My question is, is possible to run Windows through Linux via some virtual program? Either way, can you give me a brief background on how that works and what your limitations are?

Thanks,

Brandon

Generally it's best to use a virtualization server like VMware server (which is free for linux, not sure if it's free for Windows). There are other vmware-like servers like QEMU and other projects that run on top of Windows (Cooperative Linux).

Generally what you lose is CPU time and RAM. In my (limited) experience, you have to pre-assign a block of RAM to run the virtual machine. Running Windows under linux required me to block off 512MB of RAM for XP. That means of my 2GB in my machine, I only have 1.5GB available for linux.

vmware, xensource

A very real limitation is security holes. Though probably not a big deal for a home user, running windows 2003 in an emulator on a RHEL linux box opens you to holes in both Windows 2003 and RHEL.

Linux being generally more secure the Windows I wouldn't worry much, but it is possible at least in theory that Someone could exploit a flaw in the virtual version of server 2003 to give root access to your core linux system. I don't know if the white/black hats have demonstrated this "in the wild", but expect someone soon will if it hasn't happened already.

What strikes me as much more likely if it is a windows machine running virtual linux is somebody getting into the windows part, and using that to bork all the virtual linux servers.

Peace,
JimBass