This evening I discovered that VMware has a free virtual machine player for Windows and spent some time setting things up. One thing lead to another and I found myself putting together a two-part tutorial series on how to set it up.
Part One: Overview of Virtualization and Installing the VMware Player

Part Two: Setting up a Virtual Machine

I’ll expand on this more tomorrow, but it’s late now.
In the meantime here are the links referenced in the videos:
VMware Player: http://www.vmware.com/products/player
Appliance Library: http://www.vmware.com/appliances

I spent the entire day today in the realm of proprietary software setting up my MacBook laptop to run Windows XP Professional via Bootcamp. Having now used Virtual Machines and Parallel/Dual-Boot installations on a couple of machines I wanted to take a few minutes to share my experiences and thoughts on the subject.
For those of you not familiar with the concepts, Virtual Machines or vmware and parallel installations are two different methods of running multiple operating systems from a single computer. This can be done either on a …

I just ran a quick test of the existing instance of Windows XP I had set up using Virtual Box to see if the software would run in Hardy Heron.
Initially Win XP wouldn’t load and I got an error indicating:
“VirtualBox kernal driver not installed.  The vboxdrv kernal moducle was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason.  Re-setup the kernal module by executing ‘/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup’ as root.”
However once I ran the command referenced by the error message I found I could boot up the virtual Windows XP …

Here’s something to add to my to-do list.  I just ran across this demo clip on YouTube depicting how to get a virtual instance of Windows XP running on Ubuntu using an open source app called VirtualBox.
One reason I’m keen to try this option is the WINE installations I’ve used for some of my RPG games have run into trouble when switching from one disc to another.  Theoretically by running the game within a virtual instance of Windows XP, the game software wouldn’t run into the same problems.
Please note that …

OS Trifecta
Originally uploaded by acousticdad
This OS triple-play was not nearly as difficult to pull off as you might think.
Ingredients
1) Intel-based MacBook
2) VMWare Fusion
3) Windows XP Professional
4) Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
Steps to Implementation
1) Download VMWare Fusion and install on Mac OS X.
URL: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/features.html
Installation directions are exceptionally easy to follow and require only 10 to 20 minutes to complete including reading time. 30-day evaluation licenses are available for those interested in preliminary inquiry only. Retail price for a single license is USD$80.
2) Launch VMware Fusion Library
Select New and follow …