Can I install Linux inside windows? Yes. Its possible using the virtualization technology. VMvare virtual machine allows you to do that. I installed Ubuntu inside windows using Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD .iso file. It worked fine. This is a cool way to install as you don't need a CD as well. Of course it can be installed from CD also.
Its not just for Windows OS it can work with other OS as well, for example you can install Windows inside Linux, or Windows inside Mac, or Windows inside Windows :-) etc. VMware takes care of all the abstraction needed for the OS through its virtualization technology. In fact you will get a different IP address for the new virual OS and you can ping the host OS and vice a versa.
How is it possible? might be a question which comes to our mind. Actually the same processor is shared for both OS, If you have a dual core then single processor would be used for virtual OS. RAM is also shared which means enough RAM should be there, I had 1GB RAM and the installer automatically chose 512MB. Its obvious that minimum harware requirements needed by the both OS needs to be met, after sharing harware resources as well. You can run many virtual OS simultaneously if you have sufficient hardware resources.
What about harddisk? In fact harddisk is abstacted as a file of 8GB or more than that as per choice. This file can be split in 2GB sizes by selecting an option during installation. It is pariculary useful because 2GB size can easily fit into removable media like USB stick and can be traferred from one machine to other. The hardisk file format is called .vmdk (Virtual Machine DisK format) for more infor refer: VMDK. The main virtulal machine file is called as .vmx. All these files will be present in the installation folder, in my case it was C:\My Virtual Machines\Ubuntu_8.10\. Once you have this complete folder copied I guess you can even open it from another mechine using VMware Player.
VMware player is free software from VMware and it can be used to open a virtual mechine file system (.vmx). As the name indicates its just a player and you can't create virtual mechine (.vmx and .vmdk files) using VMPlayer.
So now the catch is how do we create a virtual machine? This can be done by VMware Work station, which is licenced. I used a trial vesion to crate a new virtual mechine. However there are may virual machine dump available in the internet which can be direcly used with VMware Player. I guess there some associated procedures to adapt it to a particular harware. I didn't try this so I wont be able expain more on this. One issue I faced during the installtion was that when using direct install CD .iso files, after few initial installation steps it was checking the real CD rom drive and reported "Media not Present" error. However using Live CD .iso file solved the issue. I guess you will not face any such issues if you use CD directly.
Personally it was exiting for me when I tried this. Hope you will also find it in the same way. Try it out, All the best!
Its not just for Windows OS it can work with other OS as well, for example you can install Windows inside Linux, or Windows inside Mac, or Windows inside Windows :-) etc. VMware takes care of all the abstraction needed for the OS through its virtualization technology. In fact you will get a different IP address for the new virual OS and you can ping the host OS and vice a versa.
How is it possible? might be a question which comes to our mind. Actually the same processor is shared for both OS, If you have a dual core then single processor would be used for virtual OS. RAM is also shared which means enough RAM should be there, I had 1GB RAM and the installer automatically chose 512MB. Its obvious that minimum harware requirements needed by the both OS needs to be met, after sharing harware resources as well. You can run many virtual OS simultaneously if you have sufficient hardware resources.
What about harddisk? In fact harddisk is abstacted as a file of 8GB or more than that as per choice. This file can be split in 2GB sizes by selecting an option during installation. It is pariculary useful because 2GB size can easily fit into removable media like USB stick and can be traferred from one machine to other. The hardisk file format is called .vmdk (Virtual Machine DisK format) for more infor refer: VMDK. The main virtulal machine file is called as .vmx. All these files will be present in the installation folder, in my case it was C:\My Virtual Machines\Ubuntu_8.10\. Once you have this complete folder copied I guess you can even open it from another mechine using VMware Player.
VMware player is free software from VMware and it can be used to open a virtual mechine file system (.vmx). As the name indicates its just a player and you can't create virtual mechine (.vmx and .vmdk files) using VMPlayer.
So now the catch is how do we create a virtual machine? This can be done by VMware Work station, which is licenced. I used a trial vesion to crate a new virtual mechine. However there are may virual machine dump available in the internet which can be direcly used with VMware Player. I guess there some associated procedures to adapt it to a particular harware. I didn't try this so I wont be able expain more on this. One issue I faced during the installtion was that when using direct install CD .iso files, after few initial installation steps it was checking the real CD rom drive and reported "Media not Present" error. However using Live CD .iso file solved the issue. I guess you will not face any such issues if you use CD directly.
Personally it was exiting for me when I tried this. Hope you will also find it in the same way. Try it out, All the best!
No comments:
Post a Comment