Run Multiple Operating Systems On Your Computer

Do you use multiple computers to run different operating systems? Save energy and money by running all your operating systems on one computer!

We will be using free software to "virtualize" pretty much any operating system (OS). That means your guest OS (The one you are virtualizing) will run inside your host OS (The OS that your computer runs natively) as if it was an application. To learn more about virtualization, check out Wikipedia.

The benefits are that you will save energy by running all your operating systems in one computer. You will also save money as you are not buying new computers for different operating systems. All your OSs will be right in front of you!

One downside of this is your computer will not run as fast because your system resources are being divided. However, if your computer is pretty powerful, you won't notice the speed difference much. You will need a computer that has enough free hard disk space to install the OS and enough RAM to run smoothly.

Step 1 Software

The software we will be using is VirtualBox, from Sun Microsystems. It is very easy to use, yet has many advanced features.

It will run on Windows, Linux, Mac, and OpenSolaris.

Here are some of the features:

• Guest Additions can be installed on some guest operating systems to provide better performance and integration with the host OS
• Great hardware support
• Full ACPI support, allowing better power integration between the two or more OSs
• USB Device Support, implements a virtual USB controller allowing your virtual OS to utilize your computer's USB ports
• Multiscreen resolutions, allowing your virtual machine to be spread over multiple monitors
• Multigeneration snapshots, VirtualBox can save successive snapshots of the state of the virtual machine. You can revert the virtual machine to the state of any of the snapshots.
• Run 64-bit guest OS inside 32-bit host OS, if you have 64-bit processor

Here are the supported host operating systems (List current as of 3/29/09) :

• Windows XP (32-bit)
• Windows Server 2003 (32-bit)
• Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit).
• Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Mac OS X (Intel hardware only)
• Debian GNU and Linux 3.1, 4.0, and 5.0 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Fedora Core 4-10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Gentoo Linux (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• SUSE Linux 9 and 10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• OpenSUSE 10.3, 11.0, and 11.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Ubuntu 6.06-8.10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Mandriva 2007.1 and 2008.0 (32-bit and 64-bit)

You can run any guest operating system of your choice. However, VirtualBox his optimized for Windows, Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6, Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and OS/2 Warp 4.5. Again, current as of 3/29/09.

Got all that?

Comments

[gnoseon]

When we run it for the first time, a screen pops up, giving us the option of 'Trying Ubuntu' or 'Installing Ubuntu'. Which one should we click. I don't want to accidentally convert my computer to Ubuntu.
Thanks!

[ShadowAssassin17]

Um, just wandering, should I run linux mint 11 virtually or windows 7 virtually, I like linux mint more then windows but I use windows for games, and now I have changed to mint I cant use them, and also, there are allot more applications for windows

[Foxtrot70]

Hello - Can anyone help me. I have a piece of hardware and the software for it, it is a portable single sheet scanner by MICROTEK the "Pagewiz". When I had a machine with Win95/98 as OS worked great but then with newer machines my company changed out the laptops and then I lost my portable scanner. If I install this OS on my XP Laptop and PC will I be able to use this scanner? I am really wanting to be able to use this product. - Foxtrot70

[epicnoobpwn]

Idk. What interface is it? I think usb works fine.

[Foxtrot70]

I agree USB is handy. This scanner being of older vintage uses the LP or parrallel port for communication adapting to USB not to bad of a job. The other problem is the OS being Win95. I have, since the original post, taken a computer class and as I understand this Instructable I need to; partition my harddrive; get a copy of Win95 to load to the partition and possibly a copy of a program to slow the AMD processor so that the Win95 can operate, if a slowing down program is not needed for the processor... that simplifies things. I am open to suggestions if I am in error I am open to suggestions.

[epicnoobpwn]

Virtual box provides support for serial/LP ports in your virtual machine (if your pc has physical ones or a usb adapter for the ports), just enable it in the vm's settings. Also, I would make sure your cpu provides virtualization support (when you start up the vm an indicator will display this on the status bar for cpu virtualization support) or else your cpu will run extremely slow in anything else running besides virtual box until the next reboot of your pc.

Also tell me how you got win95 installed. Did you use the floppies or a cd+startup disk floppy.

[Foxtrot70]

At my former employ we loaded Win95 from floppies. Not too bad to load just cumbersome.

[m456arcus]

Isn't mac os x only allowed to be installed on certified apple computers?

[M4industries]

Hackintosh.

[puffyfluff]

Not only that, but it can't. Mac OSX is ONLY compatible with Mac hardware. Luckily for some people, some binary programmers developed hackintosh, and later iATKOS: Mac OSX that could be run on several different hardware systems. Whether it is compaticle with Virtual Box is beyond me, but I do already know it's not compatible with MVPC.

[Foaly7]

If you could pump up your drive space and add a lot of extra monitors to your computer, this would be even better.

[epicnoobpwn]

How many video outputs do you have lol

[Foaly7]

I think you could make a splitter pretty easily.

[junits15]

ahhhhh is that vista I see?! do yourself a favor and get 7!!!!

[tompaige]

can you send the software to me

[gaurish]

Is it needed to format hard disc for new os as I also want to install Ubuntu using virtual box

[Carl6310]

Just wondering if there is any way to get full screen applications (games) to run properly/effectively on a virtual machine?, i was thinking virtual iron but its been bought up then thrown out. Any suggestions anyone?

[lieuwe]

OR if you want to run your 'guest' OS faster, you could dual-boot...

[klingoncowboy4]

dual-booting is so 90s :-p seriously vming on modern hardware is fast enough

[Jestersage]

Should my guest OS be 32 bit or 64 bit, especially with Ubuntu?

[klingoncowboy4]

depends on what you are doing 64bit guests only work on 64bit hosts though so keep that in mind

[Arbitror]

Ubuntu in probably my favorite Linux! _{^{(but mind you, I still have to try fedora 10...)}}

[gamnoparts]

I had Ubuntu installed as my host os, & xp as the guest os for a while. It worked fine. The only time I needed Windows was when my wife tried to access her college website & the course software for her online classes, but I didn't really want to suffer through using it all the time. It's not for everybody, but is cool. . .

[countable]

Its really only useful for things like programming in a different OS environment. When you start to use graphical applications (photoshop, almost any game, etc.) Then you will notice there is too much of a performance bottleneck to be used practically.

[The magical duct tape kid]

This is REALLY SWEET!! :D