For those of you that might not have encountered it, VMplayer is runs guest operating systems on a Linux or Windows host - see http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ . This is a similar offering to VirtualBox, from Sun.
Recent incarnations allow, in addition to prebuilt "appliances", a listed of operating systems that can be installed from the distribution DVD; including Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fully expecting to be rebuffed, banged in the Scientific Linux DVD, told VMplayer that it was RHEL and a short while later it was installed with no sweat. This is the 64bit version but it runs perfectly happily on an i686. I suspect that the 32 bit version would run somewhat faster but this is quite acceptable. It performs well enough that I have built gcc & gfortran 4.5.0 in less than an hour. The advantage over dual boot is that you can switch between the two OS's with a couple of clicks. The connecting to the USB ports or other peripherals is no problem and access to the internet is automatic - wired or wireless. Getting the scree size right is the only slightly fiddly bit; you have to play off the virtual machine screen size, against that set in RHEL (under system=>preferences) until you do not overfill the Windows screen whilst adequately filling, or slightly overfilling, the linux screen. It is not rocket science but takes a few minutes to get right. For reference, my host system is Windows 7 and the Scientific Linux is version 5.2. For those that have no choice in the matter, this is a very convenient way of having SL on a Windows desktop. Paul Thomas
