Main index

Introducing UNIX and Linux

Installing Linux

Overview
Starting out
Preliminaries
      Collecting information about your system
      Installation options
Single boot
Dual boot
      Booting from CD/floppy
      Booting from your hard disk
      A partitionless install
      A dedicated Linux partition
Emulators
      VMware
      WINE
Installing Linux
      Installer software
      Linux partitioning
            Typical partitions
            User accounts
      LILO
The window manager
KDE
      Desktop help
      Applications
      The KDE Control Center
      File access and the command prompt
Summary

VMware

VMware is a commercial software package that allows you to run more than one operating system simultaneously. This is done by setting up a host operating system and one (or more) guest operating systems, each of which runs in an unmodified state. Each guest operating system runs in a secure virtual machine; the beauty of VMware is that when using these virtual machines it is as easy to swap between operating systems as it is to swap between windows. In fact, if you run the virtual machine window in full screen mode, it is as if the guest operating system (OS) is the only OS on your machine.

Such sophistication must come at a price. Firstly, you will need a machine with a bare minimum of 256MB of RAM and a 400MHz processor. You will also need at least 500MB of disk for the guest OS and the associated applications. Secondly, there will be a speed reduction when using the guest OS. This can be as much as 50%, which may be a problem if your machine is at the bottom end of the hardware requirements.

VMware is very well supported and you can configure your system so that the host operating system is chosen from any of Windows XP, 2000 and NT, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux and Linux-Mandrake; the guest operating systems include all of the above and also the Windows 3.x/9x series.

You can find out more about VMware at www.vmware.com.

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