These days choosing an OS (Operating System) is like choosing an ice cream flavour from Baskin Robbins - so much to choose from, so little time! Whether you're best pals with Bill (Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, Longhorn, etc.) or a FOSS advocate (Linux, but which flavour?), there are a myriad of flavours from which to choose. Now, what if you can run all of them from one box? You can, with virtualization.
"Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines, with heterogeneous operating systems to run in isolation, side-by-side on the same physical machine. Each virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardware (e.g., RAM, CPU, NIC, etc.) upon which an operating system and applications are loaded. The operating system sees a consistent, normalized set of hardware regardless of the actual physical hardware components."
Right now, the best virtualization software out there is from a company called VMWare. They have a whole suite of products from which to choose. You can run, VMWare Server, for instance, from your PC (reasonably fast, pack it with lots of RAM), and switch back and forth from Windows to Linux to your heart's content. The best part of it is - it's free! Well, except for the Data Centre and Enterprise products, of course. But the free VMWare Server should give you a pretty good idea how virtualization works.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft is also getting into the fray. It is offering Virtual PC 2007 for free as well. Alas, their Virtual Server isn't free but you can download a trial copy.
Want to run XP on your intel Mac? Well, you can boot-camp or you can run Parallels. The latter will set you back $79 and the former is still officially in beta.
So, go ahead, virtualize your world. Choose any flavour, any computing experience that suits you. With virtualization, you don't need to choose sides. Welcome to the future!
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