Linux Format forums

[stuarte9]

Hi,

I require to run Win XP as a guest OS on Fedora 15.

My set up is :-

H/W: Pentium 4 @ 2GHZ, 2 GB RAM, 140 GB HDD.
S/W: Fedora 15, KDE, QEMU.

I don't know if the CPU has virtualisation support built into it, I suspect not.

So, is it possible to set up some sort of virtual machine on this platform that will run a Win XP iso ?

If so then what virtual machine package can/should I use. Libvirt is installed, populated and updated. I've also installed AQEMU and Qemu Launcher.

Is Qemu a reasonable choice for this platform ? I think I read somewhere that Qemu uses the KVM which in turn requires the presence of virtualisation support built into the CPU.

If this is true then should I use another package, perhaps VirtualBox ?

In general terms, any idea what the performance may(!) be like on this platform ? That is, will it be too slow to be usable, or only just usable ?

I've looked over the articles in LXF 125 (p56-59) & LXF 138 (p96-99) but I did not find them to be of help with this setup. I've also looked on the web but can't find any up-to-date howtos for this platform there either.

If some kind soul knows of a suitable howto for this platform that I've somehow overlooked could you please point me in the direction of it ?

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give with this.

Stuart

[Ram]

I personally use Virtual Box on my Laptop running Ubuntu 10.04LTS.

Performance will be down to how much RAM you give it and the size of the Virtual Hard Disk and then what programs you will be running in XP.
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Ubuntu LXDE 12.04 running on AMD Phenom II*4; ASUS Crosshair III Formula MB; 4 GB Ram.....

[Rhakios]

If you want to find out if your processor supports virtualisation, then you can do:

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep vmx

(svm in the case of AMD processors)

if it turns out a line with this in, then it does.
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Bye, Rhakios

[stuarte9]

Good morning folks,

Thanks for the replies.

@ Ram: I understand what you say. I'm thinking of, say, 620MB for the VM (the Win XP iso is just under 600MB) and maybe 4 GB for the virtual HDD.

The reason I need to do this is that I'm attending a programming course where the class is already using Win XP in a virtual machine, Virtual PC I think, running on Windows 7. In an a few weeks we may be installing a Java compiler and also a PL/SQL setup onto Win XP there. So, it would be useful to have a similar setup at home.

@ Rhakios: I copied and pasted into a konsole the "cat ..." command that you gave. This returned an empty line. In other words, the command did not return any output. I've also used dolphin to look into the cpuinfo "file" but there is no mention of vmx in the flags section, or anywhere else in the "file". However the flags section does contain a "vme", for what its worth.

I hope this is of use and thanks again for your help so far.

Stuart

[lok1950]

The size of the iso is meaningless in this instance runnnig xp in only 620Mb is problematic 1 Gb is much better.

Enjoy the Choice

[Rhakios]

[Ram]

My Virtual XP machine is using 500 mb for RAM and 10GB for hard disk, with just under 2gb spare.
_________________

Ubuntu LXDE 12.04 running on AMD Phenom II*4; ASUS Crosshair III Formula MB; 4 GB Ram.....