Is There An Alternative To Microsoft's Virtual Pc

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dr. Strange
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Dr. Strange

My trial period of Microsoft's excellent Virtual Pc is over. Does anyone
know of a freeware alternative.

TIA.

Regards.
 
Dr. Strange said:
My trial period of Microsoft's excellent Virtual Pc is over. Does anyone
know of a freeware alternative.
Click to expand...

As others have stated, BOCHS is about it, but there are a couple of
things to look out for. It works better if yur host system is Linux, as
opposed to Windows. Although it does work with Windows as a host, there
are some issues, ie. serial communications doesn't yet work. I've always
experienced difficulty with networking (W98SE guest / XP host). Sound
isn't perfect, but does work, personally not a big deal for me. USB is
in some form of working, but I suspect it's less than perfect with a
Windows host, although to be fair, I haven't heard anything yet. Video
support is a bit limited, but there are alternatives, like Scitech
Display Doctor. You can find free versions if you look hard enough. If
not post here, and I can email you or post a copy temporarily. Also,
good configuration files are hard to come by for a Windows host, so if
you need some help there I can give you the basic one I start from.

I hope you can use BOCHS, as an open source alternative, it really is a
huge untertaking to completely emulate a PC under another OS. The
authors have really done a great job, and look to improve the system as
time goes on. I use it almost every day to run legacy software under XP.
Works great to give you a real DOS BOX under Windows.

If all you need to emulate is DOS, the there is another free product
called DOSBOX. It also works very well to give a pure DOS environment
under XP.

Hope this helps
 
My trial period of Microsoft's excellent Virtual Pc is over. Does anyone
know of a freeware alternative.
Click to expand...
<irony>Nearly as excellent as Connectix's Virtual PC, which allows you to run
Linux under VPC.</irony>
 
Tim at this Newsgroup said:
<irony>Nearly as excellent as Connectix's Virtual PC, which allows you to run
Linux under VPC.</irony>
Click to expand...

Yeah, MS sealed that up so that you can only run non-linux OS's. If I
recall correctly, you can only run MS or MS compat OS's with the MS
version of Virtual PC.
 
H-Man said:
As others have stated, BOCHS is about it, but there are a couple of
things to look out for. It works better if yur host system is Linux, as
opposed to Windows. Although it does work with Windows as a host, there
are some issues, ie. serial communications doesn't yet work. I've always
experienced difficulty with networking (W98SE guest / XP host). Sound
isn't perfect, but does work, personally not a big deal for me. USB is
in some form of working, but I suspect it's less than perfect with a
Windows host, although to be fair, I haven't heard anything yet. Video
support is a bit limited, but there are alternatives, like Scitech
Display Doctor. You can find free versions if you look hard enough. If
not post here, and I can email you or post a copy temporarily. Also,
good configuration files are hard to come by for a Windows host, so if
you need some help there I can give you the basic one I start from.

I hope you can use BOCHS, as an open source alternative, it really is a
huge untertaking to completely emulate a PC under another OS. The
authors have really done a great job, and look to improve the system as
time goes on. I use it almost every day to run legacy software under XP.
Works great to give you a real DOS BOX under Windows.

If all you need to emulate is DOS, the there is another free product
called DOSBOX. It also works very well to give a pure DOS environment
under XP.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

I see virtual PC has now been bought by 'the excelelnt' Microsoft!
Another one bites the dust, huh?
The alternative to VPC is VMWare.
Runs nice on nix and win. you need plenty memory tho, and its far from
being free, unless your in a warez group or p2p.
i like the sound of dosbox.
and much respect to those that give up their time and talents to open
sourse solutions. I hope you all get paid back in the end.
cruz
 
rm -rf /home/Dr. Strange:
My trial period of Microsoft's excellent Virtual Pc is over. Does anyone
know of a freeware alternative.
Click to expand...

Bochs. But be warned, it will be slow unless you have a fast machine.
Installing Win 3.11 here in Bochs took 20 minutes or so on my Pentium 233.

[]s
 
rm -rf /home/cruzion:
I see virtual PC has now been bought by 'the excelelnt' Microsoft!
Another one bites the dust, huh?
The alternative to VPC is VMWare.
Runs nice on nix and win. you need plenty memory tho, and its far from
being free, unless your in a warez group or p2p.
i like the sound of dosbox.
and much respect to those that give up their time and talents to open
sourse solutions. I hope you all get paid back in the end.
cruz
Click to expand...

BTW, Bochs and VMware work in a different way, while they do the same job:

- Bochs simulate a full x86 processor. If you use the 'MSD' utility from MS-
DOS inside Bochs, or, using Linux inside Bochs, type 'cat /proc/cpuinfo'
you'll get that there's a 66MHz processor.

I am using Bochs to run Windows 3.1 so I can play old games that run too fast
on Windows 98.

- VMware uses "virtualization". As I understand it, it uses the same processor
as the host machine (the machine where VMWare is running).

Since I almost refuse to use expensive programs [1], Bochs was my only option.

[]s

[1] For me, expensive = cost > $50 (R$ 150 in Brazilian money).
and IIRC VMWare costs $100.
 
Yeah, MS sealed that up so that you can only run non-linux OS's. If I
recall correctly, you can only run MS or MS compat OS's with the MS
version of Virtual PC.
Click to expand...

Crap!

Why don't you look around before you blabber? Have a squiz at:
<http://www.computerbits.com/archive/2004/0600/virtuallinux.html>
for one of a number of examples.

<quoting>
*Installing Linux on Microsoft Virtual PC*
Undocumented by Microsoft ... by Michael Jackman
If you run both Windows and Linux for testing or for cross-platform
purposes, you may be surprised to learn that you can run Linux within
Windows using Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004, a competitor to the more
expensive, but more robust, VMware.

Many Linux users were concerned when MS purchased the former Virtual
PC maker, Connectrix Corp., in January 2003. Microsoft's product
release last December only continued the misunderstandings, as
documentation for installing and running Linux was nonexistent. Rumors
flew that Microsoft had entirely removed Linux guest support.
Fortunately, this is not the case. As expected, Microsoft simply
offers no _official_ support for BSD, Unix, Linux, NetWare and
Solaris. But these OSs will install on Virtual PC, and run well.
[Installation details follow.]
</quoting>

Cheers, Phred.
 
<quoting>
*Installing Linux on Microsoft Virtual PC*
Undocumented by Microsoft ... by Michael Jackman
If you run both Windows and Linux for testing or for cross-platform
purposes, you may be surprised to learn that you can run Linux within
Windows using Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004, a competitor to the more
expensive, but more robust, VMware.

Many Linux users were concerned when MS purchased the former Virtual
PC maker, Connectrix Corp., in January 2003. Microsoft's product
release last December only continued the misunderstandings, as
documentation for installing and running Linux was nonexistent. Rumors
flew that Microsoft had entirely removed Linux guest support.
Fortunately, this is not the case. As expected, Microsoft simply
offers no _official_ support for BSD, Unix, Linux, NetWare and
Solaris. But these OSs will install on Virtual PC, and run well.
[Installation details follow.]
</quoting>

Cheers, Phred.
Click to expand...


VMware has a *nix version <Linux as the Host system>
To bad that Virtual PC 2004 will only run on 2000 Pro and XP pro
versions...I wanted to give the 45 day trial a spin...but I have XP
Home ver........
bLB
 
<quoting>
*Installing Linux on Microsoft Virtual PC*
Undocumented by Microsoft ... by Michael Jackman
If you run both Windows and Linux for testing or for cross-platform
purposes, you may be surprised to learn that you can run Linux within
Windows using Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004, a competitor to the more
expensive, but more robust, VMware.

Many Linux users were concerned when MS purchased the former Virtual
PC maker, Connectrix Corp., in January 2003. Microsoft's product
release last December only continued the misunderstandings, as
documentation for installing and running Linux was nonexistent. Rumors
flew that Microsoft had entirely removed Linux guest support.
Fortunately, this is not the case. As expected, Microsoft simply
offers no _official_ support for BSD, Unix, Linux, NetWare and
Solaris. But these OSs will install on Virtual PC, and run well.
[Installation details follow.]
</quoting>
Click to expand...

VMware has a *nix version <Linux as the Host system>
To bad that Virtual PC 2004 will only run on 2000 Pro and XP pro
versions...I wanted to give the 45 day trial a spin...but I have XP
Home ver........
Click to expand...

Yeah. There are quite a few useful features of XP Pro lacking in
Home. The more I look, the more I find. They go way beyond the usual
"If you don't want to access corporate networks you don't need Pro."


Cheers, Phred.
 
H-Man said:
Yeah, MS sealed that up so that you can only run non-linux OS's. If I
recall correctly, you can only run MS or MS compat OS's with the MS
version of Virtual PC.
Click to expand...

Not true.
MS Virtual PC has several preconfigured settings for MS OS's. But this
doesn't stop you from setting up your own settings for Linux or anything
else. In fact, the default settings for non-MS OS's works with all of the
several Linux distros I have running on my PC under Virtual PC.
 
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