Two utilities to provide dual OS support
Scott Lowe
Published: 29 May 2002 11:03 BST
What about graphical desktops?
Both of these products allow you to use a graphical desktop, such as Windows (obviously) and KDE or GNOME inside the guest machine. In Figure B, you can see that I am running a Linux server inside a Virtual PC partition. However, you can also get the virtual machine to go into full screen mode, which gives you the look and feel of the guest OS, while still running on top of Windows.
| Figure B |
 |
| You can see the Linux server running inside a Virtual PC partition. |
How do I use it?
In addition to being able to be used to provide a clean support migration from Windows to Linux, these two products have a number of other purposes. I use VMware on my laptop to write most of my articles for TechRepublic that depend on multiple machines. For the times when I need separate hardware, I have it at home, but being able to emulate a Windows domain controller and a Samba server on my laptop allowed me to write an article on supporting Samba domains with Windows servers all on one machine.
Both worth a look
As you can see, these are two very powerful and very useful products. If you are considering a move to Linux at the desktop level, using a product such as this is an absolutely time- and money-saver for supporting both desktops during the migration. You can also use them for testing new software, because a Linux or second Windows desktop is just a few clicks away.
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