VirtualBox Seamless Mode
Do you feel like trying lots of different distributions? Do you absolutely have to run some Windows application (for example, Visual Studio)? Then maybe virtualization is the answer for you.
Here’s an article I’ve written for the HAAGA-HELIA Linux Club. This is just the beginning, you’ll find the rest at: http://hhlinuxclub.org/articles/virtualization
Introduction
What is virtualization? Well, in it’s most basic terms it means running an operating system (or part of an operating system) on top of another. Virtualization is typically divided into five different types, which are:
- Full virtualization
- Hardware-assisted virtualization
- Partial virtualization
- Paravirtualization
- Operating System-level virtualization
We’re going to focus on full virtualization in this article. If you really want to learn about the others, please read the Wikipedia page on Platform Virtualization . Something that may interest you is that the server that runs this web-site uses operating system-level virtualization, namely Open VZ.
Full Virtualization
Full virtualization means that the virtualization software provides a full simulation of the underlying hardware for the operating system. This means that the virtualization software creates a virtual machine which is capable of running pretty much any operating system. This means that you can run Windows as a guest on a Linux host, or even the other way round.
Examples of software that use full virtualization include:
- VirtualBox
- VMWare Workstation
- Parallels Workstation
In this article we’re going to be using VirtualBox , which is free and also has an open source edition available.
Tags: virtualbox, virtualization