Question

In Windows 7 if you have a multi-core processor you can run virtual machines. There is something called XP mode which lets you do a full XP install and lets you run XP just like the real thing, without having to dual boot or exit Windows 7. I think that when XP is running it gets to have a separate CPU core all to itself. It works just like a normal XP installation.

Can a similar thing be done with Linux?

Answer 1

You can run Linux using other virtualization software (like VMware), but you can't use XP mode in Windows Seven for Linux.

Answer 2

It's just virtualisation. You don't need multiple CPUs/cores and a single core is not assigned to each Virtual Machine; the host machine shares its resources with any VMs running at the same time.

Virtual XP Mode is just XP running in an integrated desktop-sharing version of Microsoft's existing virtualisation application Virtual PC. You can certainly run Linux in Virtual PC, though Microsoft doesn't officially support it and it's not as easy to install the ‘guest extensions’ that allow seamless desktop sharing (like in Virtual XP Mode), easy file sharing and faster graphics operations.

You might prefer VirtualBox (open source) or VMware (commercial, but free versions also available), which are essentially the same thing as Virtual PC but do explicitly support Linux. Either way, launching virtualised applications won't be quite as slickly integrated with the host OS as Virtual XP Mode, but it's still very usable.

Answer 3

A similar thing as in running one OS inside another? Check out VirtualBox.

Answer 4

Sure, it's called virtualization and theres lots of software that does it: VMware, Virtualbox, etc.

Answer 5

In addition to the Virtual-Machine solutions mentioned above, there are also several projects being developed to have Linux running natively inside Windows.

Here are a few links:

• CoLinux: the Linux kernel which runs alongside the Windows OS (Windows 7 included)
• andLinux: a compiled Ubuntu distro which uses CoLinux
• Portable Ubuntu: very useful for running off a flash-drive