Virtualization on Linux

What operating system do you use for your computer? Linux or Windows? I was using Microsoft Windows when I was senior high school but then I move to linux, formerly I decided to move to linux just because my desire of computer tweaking and to try a different feel of computing. I had also move back to windows because at that time I had trouble when I found problem about my computer, especially comes from my hardware. I can't play any multimedia file because my sound card and graphic card are not supported yet with Linux I used, I've tried many distros and I found the distro which most suitable with my computer Ubuntu 06.04.

But in this post, I'm not gonna talk about my ubuntu. It's Okay for me who have a long time using linux, I have already move all things to Linux, I do my job with this, but what about people who are beginners using linux, ok we can say that commonly Linux has come with many alternative application on it, such openoffice to switch microsoft office (I think openoffice is better than microsoft office), thunderbird as email client, and for you who like multimedia (graphic or audio) there are several applications available to fullfil your desire. But sometimes for some people, this applications still cannot meet with their need in any reason, like not get used to, to difficult to learn or etc, and they want to use their ultimate weapon when used Microsoft Windows, no problem there is still an emulator called wine (wine is not emulator) funny name of application I think :), it is an emulator to emulate windows software to run in linux, but it is still limited in number of software which can use with.

So how the conclusion for all of this, in one side we want to migrate in linux because it capability and performance but in one side we need Microsoft Windows application to done our job. Don't worry there are 2 more way to solve this problem
1 with dual boot
2 with virtualization

this post is to explain about virtualization in linux, what virtualization is?  like it said, virtualization is to virtualize operating system inside operating system. in this case is to install Microsoft Windows inside Linux using Virtualization application, with this we are not only install application on our Linux  but also install the operating system by virtualising the resource (Hardisk, Processor, Graphic, Audio etc). There are so many Virtualization application spread on internet, the famous one in Linux is VirutalBox and Qemu (Opensource). Though it's free, but the features is no less than licensed software like VMware. VirtualBox has GUI interface like VMware. To choose processor which has been supported to virtualization, you could check it in each official site. For Intel check here, and for AMD can be checked here. for Intel know as Intel VT-x technology and for AMD called AMD-V

Technology in this processor is enable the operating system we emulate to use and access directly the processor like using OS not virtualize. So the emulated OS will has speed, feature and compatibility of processor as same as when OS done with real hardware without virtualize.

In ubuntu (I use Ubuntu) we can download Qemu and VirtualBox via synaptic or from console with this steps:

to install qemu
$ sudo apt-get install qemu qemu-launcher qtemu

to install VirtualBox
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox

or you can download the newest version of VirtualBox from official site here or install via ppa:launchpad