Just been playing around with SliTaz, a tiny (and I mean tiny) distro.
Although ridiculously small (around 30Mb download), it is actually a really useable little distro.
I installed it onto a 1Gb USB stick for now to play around a little (as well as having a live version in a virtual machine) and have been updating it, adding Firefox 10, Flash etc to bring it up to the spec which my wife would want on her EeePC (she is pretty cheesed off with the Xandros install on her 701 and wants an alternative on a SD card). We have tried various other light and mini distros - LXDE versions of the main distros mostly, but they all need well over 1Gb of disk space to install in - which on a little 4Gb drive isn't really useful.
Check out SliTaz - I think you will be impressed!
http://www.slitaz.org/
Showing posts with label virtual machines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virtual machines. Show all posts
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Sunday, October 01, 2006
...hello again!
Worry not - the title is a family "in-joke" ;)
Lately, I have been experimenting a lot with virtual machines.
What are they?
Well, essentially, they are software programs which allow you to run one operating system inside another. So, if you have Windows (why??), you can install the program which will set up a virtual PC for you. That creates a virtual hard drive and all the other things you need to make a PC. Then, inside your new virtual PC, you can install an operating system and use it as though it was running on a real computer. It helps if you have a fairly modern PC and generous memory, because the virtual PC will share your processor and ram.
Not being a Windows person, I am currently running several virtual PCs which are running Linux distros. As I may have mentioned before, I am running Kubuntu on my laptop. It is the current 6.06 version. However, there is a test version available of the next release. So, I downloaded the .iso image and created a virtual PC for it. Conveniently, you can use the .iso image as if it was a real CD, so it saves time having to burn it to a disk. Anyway, I installed the Kubuntu testing version of 6.10 Beta. I can then run both 6.06 and 6.10 at the same time and switch between them as I wish - unlike a dual boot type setup, where I would need to restart each time.
I will probably have more to say on 6.10 in a later blog, but for now, I will say that it seems to be quite similar to 6.06 - in that it is stable and works fine.
So I suggest virtual PCs are a useful way to experiment with other operating systems. Windows users can run Linux in a virtual machine to see what they think - and of course they can run both Windows and Linux at the same time, rather than messing with dual booting!
There are a lot of things I could comment on regarding virtual machines, but I would suggest a Google around at a couple of them and see which would be most useful to you. I have used Bochs, Qemu and VMWare Server. All these are available free of charge from the relevant websites. I understand that Microsoft also have a virtual machine, but of course I have not been able to test that out.
Lately, I have been experimenting a lot with virtual machines.
What are they?
Well, essentially, they are software programs which allow you to run one operating system inside another. So, if you have Windows (why??), you can install the program which will set up a virtual PC for you. That creates a virtual hard drive and all the other things you need to make a PC. Then, inside your new virtual PC, you can install an operating system and use it as though it was running on a real computer. It helps if you have a fairly modern PC and generous memory, because the virtual PC will share your processor and ram.
Not being a Windows person, I am currently running several virtual PCs which are running Linux distros. As I may have mentioned before, I am running Kubuntu on my laptop. It is the current 6.06 version. However, there is a test version available of the next release. So, I downloaded the .iso image and created a virtual PC for it. Conveniently, you can use the .iso image as if it was a real CD, so it saves time having to burn it to a disk. Anyway, I installed the Kubuntu testing version of 6.10 Beta. I can then run both 6.06 and 6.10 at the same time and switch between them as I wish - unlike a dual boot type setup, where I would need to restart each time.
I will probably have more to say on 6.10 in a later blog, but for now, I will say that it seems to be quite similar to 6.06 - in that it is stable and works fine.
So I suggest virtual PCs are a useful way to experiment with other operating systems. Windows users can run Linux in a virtual machine to see what they think - and of course they can run both Windows and Linux at the same time, rather than messing with dual booting!
There are a lot of things I could comment on regarding virtual machines, but I would suggest a Google around at a couple of them and see which would be most useful to you. I have used Bochs, Qemu and VMWare Server. All these are available free of charge from the relevant websites. I understand that Microsoft also have a virtual machine, but of course I have not been able to test that out.
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