> Apparently Craig wrote: > > Recently, our laptop, the only thing around here with Windows on it, > was broken, so I have been thinking about installing a Virtual Box virtual > machine and then Windows 7 32-bit on that. > > I have downloaded the RHEL5 RPM file and can install that easily. > > What do I do then?
Install the VirtualBox package, deal with the dependencies, and launch the GUI. Then get out a MSWin installer disk, create a new guest machine, and proceed to install MSWin onto it. *smiles*
Max wrote: Uh, I may be wrong, but the Oracle Virtual Box that I played with was not a "bare metal" operating system, it was a program that ran inside the M$ OS.
Correct. You get VirtualBox for your host OS - (MS, *nix, Mac). Then VirtualBox can create a "guest" - which _acts_ like a bare metal computer. It uses a hostOS file as it's harddrive and you can then install any OS you want on the guest. I have never run on a MS host, but I have many Linux hosts setup. The general scheme is a host can have one or more guests running on it. The OS on each guest thinks its running a bare metal machine - but it's not. Each guest connects to the outside world through the host, and can be "operated" either from the host. The harddrive file can be "dynamically allocated" which makes a sparse file on the host, meaning the guest can be told it has a 20G harddrive, but the host "harddrive" file is only as big as what is used - up to the full 20G. Over time, it will grow, and there are tools to allow reducing the size. VirtualBox like to have RAM, but I run WinXP guest on a Debian host with 2G RAM, so it doesn't have to be huge amounts to work. The guest NIC can be bridged or NAT. Oh, I do recommend "guest additions" - which is software for the _guest_ to make it easier/smoother to manage it from the host. I abandoned dual boot a decade or so ago and all my MSWin dependencies are managed in various guests. USB now works well, network has worked well for a long time, serial is solid - but any tight connections to external hardware stuff is the most likely place for there to be a problem. When I had dual boot, I had to install enough software in MSWin that I could function - browser, PDF reader, file manager, etc. With it as a guest OS, all that is handled by the host. Copy/paste even works between the host and the guest. In my MSWin guests, I can run the latest version of Acrobat Reader (no longer available for Linux, but required for fill-in tax forms), CAD program, etc. One guest is only for my ancient Garmin. It was a install all the bits to make it work - now it's "portable" in that I can "Export an Appliance" which is VirtualBox speak for making a portable copy that I can then open on any host. Same sort of thing for iTunes - but that one didn't relocate very well. I have a Linux guest with the harddrive set to "immutable" (it reverts every time it reboots) so the kids who can't read can use the computer and if they mess something it "fixes itself" *smiles*. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
