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[Japo]

Thanks.

It should be just as easy to do in a virtual machine what you did in a real one. To swap CDs just insert it the same if you're telling VPC to use your real CD drive (or mount a different image if using image files). You'll likely already know that this is done from the CD menu or right-clicking on the CD icon in the status bar.

[Japo]

Well I installed Windows 3.1 on the DOS machine, and then OS/2 2.1 on the same one, now I can boot either DOS/Win3.1 or OS/2, although not by means of a normal boot manager --that option was of course available as well-- but of some special OS/2 feature. In the same machine where I can't get any DOS game to run decently, both Win3.1 and OS/2 work fine with good performance. I've got sound but there seems to be some problem with MIDI in both, maybe I'm doing something wrong; I don't care anyway, I won't be using this, it's only experimental. Here's a OS/2 screenshot:

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It's a pity that OS/2 didn't work out. It was a joint enterprise by IBM and Microsoft, even MS intended it to replace DOS, hence the name, whilst Windows was intended to become only what it was, a crappy DOS GUI to please DOS customers in the meantime. MS's involvement with OS/2, an eventually failing project, was seemingly the reason we didn't have a decent OS until WinNT/2000/XP, before that Windows was improvised as a crappy GUI on to op an old non-multitask DOS.

By the way I haven't tried this on VMware since I've actually uninstalled it. As a matter of fact I restored the system all the way before its installation. I was experiencing some problems with my Internet access shortcut's taking ages to work; I don't know if it was related nor can see why, but I have no use whatsoever for VMware anyway.

When I'm really bored I'll play with Linux. Any Linux fan out there can advise me which version/distribution/whatever a newbie should get to learn what the heck Linux is about? Lately I hear a lot about Ubuntu.

[mirrorshades]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Mar 7 2007, 07:42 AM) [snapback]282276[/snapback]</div>

When I'm really bored I'll play with Linux. Any Linux fan out there can advise me which version/distribution/whatever a newbie should get to learn what the heck Linux is about? Lately I hear a lot about Ubuntu.[/b]

I have used many of the purported newbie-friendly distributions (Red Hat, Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE, Ubuntu, Knoppix), and my favorite remains Mandriva (formerly Mandrake). Every other one of those I've listed has had something about it that annoys me... but Mandriva just works the way I expect it to almost all of the time.

Of course, the beauty of linux is that there is no one *best* anything... And virtual machines make it easy to test out distributions without sacrificing a real machine.

For the record, I use DOSBox most frequently as a virtual machine; other than that, I have had slightly better luck with VirtualPC (even before Microsoft bought it) than VMWare, though I have used both.

[Reup]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Mar 3 2007, 10:45 PM) [snapback]281777[/snapback]</div>

VMware emulating a Windows machine. Just... don't. It's not nice to watch. I've only tested Win98 as well so be warned, but the performance was awful, I couldn't believe the humongous difference with VPC. It's not that advanced programs or games run slow, it's that Windows itself is hardly functional. Not only the speed, for some reason the drivers for the monitor wouldn't install, and they install all right both in my old machine I replaced and in the other Win98 virtual machine created with MS Virtual PC. Seemingly the video card emulated by VMware wasn't recognized by Win98 as any it has drivers for, that's just unforgivable because Win98SE came with drivers for most hardware of its time. I was astonished to learn that not having the drivers equalled not being able of going above 640x480 and few colours.

So as far as I know, having tested only Win98, Windows in VMware is a no-no. Nobody knows Windows better than Microsoft, so use Microsoft's Virtual PC to emulate a Windows machine.
[/b]

I've worked on Windows XP installation running in VMWare, as well as MS Server 2003, MS Exchange 2003, Sharepoint Server 2007. All in VMWare. They ran flawlessly.

Edit: 'Worked on' in this case measn that I've developed windows application on a windows xp installation running in VMWare. Running Visual Studio 2005 amongst other thing.

[Japo]

Okay thanks Reup for your input, as I said I only tested Win98. Anyway I don't know why it's so crappy for me, if people out there are obviously using it all right. Maybe it works fine with XP and awful with 98, but that sounds odd.

Thanks also to Mirrorshades, although I don't think I'll take the time necessary to install Linux any time soon...