whats a good free virtual pc, (fastest 1)

mas5acre · 03-10-2006, 08:56 PM

whats a good freeware virtual pc like program to test drive linux? fastest one or easiest one?

Matir · 03-10-2006, 09:20 PM

I like the VMWare Player myself.

acruxksa · 03-10-2006, 10:19 PM

If test driving linux is your main goal, I'd recommend a live cd distro. I'm partial to SimplyMepis myself, but there are a lot of them out there. VectorLinux, Knoppix, Gnoppix and Gentoo even has a live cd now.

There are a lot more, but I can't think of them at the moment. www.distrowatch.org would be where I started though.

Gato Azul · 03-10-2006, 10:30 PM

In addition to VMWare Player (which only runs virtual machines - can't create them), there's the free (as in price) VMWare Server. It's in beta right now, but I've not experienced any issues whatsoever with it. VMWare betas tend to be quite stable IMHO.

If you're looking more for free (as in freedom) virtualization or emulation technology then there's Bochs, QEMU, Plex86 (though it seems to be dead at the moment), and Xen. I'm sure there are probably several that I've missed or forgotten too, but that should get you started.

Go ahead and play around with them, see what you like. I really favor VMWare, but that's just me!

Hope that helps!

depam · 03-11-2006, 03:20 AM

VMWare is the fastest but its not free. Personally, I am using qemu and I think its practical to use this instead of paying for VMWare's expensive license

Gato Azul · 03-11-2006, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by depam

VMWare is the fastest but its not free. Personally, I am using qemu and I think its practical to use this instead of paying for VMWare's expensive license

Actually, VMWare just recently released their server (I believe it's the GSX version?) for free as in cost. There're only beta releases right now, but even after they reach a stable version it's going to remain free.

depam · 04-21-2006, 09:53 PM

I used VMWare GSX Beta version before. After installation, it seems okay but after I boot up my PC it runs too slow. I've used qemu but can't seem to compile kqemu.

I am using Mepis 3.4.3. I downloaded kqemu and qemu 0.8. After compiling qemu, I typed modprobe kqemu and this is what is get:

FATAL: Error inserting kqemu (/lib/modules/2.6.15-1-586tsc/misc/kqemu.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

WHen I typed dmesg | tail -5, i get:

kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address

Anyone had the same problem and was able to solve it?

Any other alternatives to qemu and VMWare which is a lot easier to install and use? I would like to Windows on my Mepis..