OneAndOneIs2

At the Sussex LUG meeting the other week, somebody gave a presentation on Qemu - an emulator available for both Linux and Windows, capable of running both.

So I figured I'd have a play. It's pretty simple to set up & use: Create a file as big as you want your hard drive to be - say, 500MB - and install the OS you want by booting from the install CD.

So I booted off a DamnSmallLinux CD I had lying around - and it worked perfectly, altho a tad slowly here & there. The "Intall to hard drive" thingy also worked flawlessly.

Interestingly, ReactOS also installed perfectly via Qemu - which is more than it does on my real PC! :o( I guess the emulated Pentium machine Qemu presents ReactOS with is more compatible than my own hardware.

Anyway, I've been playing around with DSL as an installed-to-disk Distro for the first time. It's actually a pretty good OS. Struggles a bit with Firefox, but I was able to play Ogg & MP3 files in XMMS without any trouble, and the package manager software installed Doom in seconds - even putting an icon on the desktop for it. And Doom runs perfectly well even on Qemu (Altho it does so in a very small screen) - pity it doesn't do Mouselook tho, I've grown very fond of Legacy Doom because of its ability to use mouselook.

I may have a go with VMware when I've got a minute - I've even got an installation CD, tho I'd probably use Portage if possible.

But Qemu is definitely worth a look if you like playing around with such things. Here's a screenshot: