Linux Emulators

JasonX

Hi All,

I wanted to start playing around with the command line, and from what I have read, I'm best off creating a virtual environment or building a secondary PC.

Are there any options to use an existing Windows based PC that has only 1 hard drive (yes I know I can partition)? I just want to see if there were any new options as most of the information I read was several years old.

Thanks!

Patel128

For my lab box I use VirtualBox for all the distros I want to mess with. If you break anything all you have to do is either snapshot back to a good version or just delete it and start over.

coty24

You can use wubi if you want to use ubuntu.

paul78

Hi Jason - the more common approach to accomplish what you are trying to do is to use a virtualized machine guest. It not technically an OS emulator. A simple explanation can be found here - Virtual machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With VM's and the available processing power of most computers today, there is really very little reason to repartition a computer or even build a new one if you simply want to try other operating systems.

One of the more popular virtualization solutions is by VMWare - you can find the free VMPlayer software here -Free VMware Player: Run Windows 8, Chrome OS on a Virtual PC

Also - it sounds like you are using Microsoft Windows - if you are using Windows 7 - you can use the Microsoft virtualization solution for Windows 7 called Virtual PC which you can find here - Windows Virtual PC: Home Page

Enjoy

antielvis

Paul is right on the money. The Free VMware player is all you'll need (and the iso of your favourite flavour of linux). It's very very easy to setup VMware player & load linux (mostly next next finish)