Got my feet wet - now getting cold feet.

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

At 21:48 20/02/2004 -0500, James Carruthers wrote:
>Thank you to everyone who offered me advice on putting Linux on my
>inspiron 1100. Your responses were very informative and helpful. I've
>filed your advice for future reference, when I'm in a better position to
>implement it and delve deeper into the Linux OS for my personal use.
>Thanks again,
>James

Hi James,

There are relatively low risk ways of using Linux on your laptop without 
having to make any changes to your current Windows installation. If you use 
virtual machine technology, you will be able to run Windows and Linux, or 
other x86 operating systems simultaneously. The machine that I am typing 
this on is running Windows 2000 Pro on a virtual machine created under 
VMware <http://www.vmware.com> with Mandrake 9.1 as the host OS. I could 
have done it the other way around, i.e. Windows 2000 as the host with Linux 
being the guest OS but I wanted the more stable of the two operating 
systems to be the host. VMware is not the only option. I suppose one 
advantage of running Linux within a virtual machine is that you can be 
reasonably certain there will not be problems with hardware compatibility 
since the virtual machines tend to be "vanilla" configurations. Below are a 
few other options. N.B. I only have personal experience with VMware and 
Win4Lin.

<http://www.colinux.org/> Open Source - Windows must be host

<http://www.twoostwo.org/> Either Windows or Linux host - seems like a 
commercial product though I could not find out how much it is beyond the 
three month trial period.

<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/default.asp> Microsoft bought 
Connectix last year. Unsurprisingly, it only runs on Windows or OS X.

<http://www.flashvos.com/frame_index.html> Does not require a host OS. 
Allows one to run multiple x86 operating systems simultaneously. Looks very 
interesting and is quite inexpensive.

<http://www.hyperos2002.com/> Commercial product.

<http://bochs.sourceforge.net/> Open Source IA32 emulator that allows one 
to create virtual machines - similar in concept to VMware.

Before embarking on this adventure, I would recommend making a disk image 
of your Windows installation so that you can recover quickly in the event 
of a problem. Actually, that is a good practice regardless because of the 
propensity of Windows to grow barnacles and have to be taken to dry dock 
periodically.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Tel: 416-410-3326  

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