John Carl Villanueva06 July 2009, 12:25 PM
Older virtualization software made it possible to test-run Linux in Windows, but now, it's also possible to do it the other way around.
Thanks to the newly released Sun Virtual Box 3.0, it's now much easier to test Windows 7 in Linux. Despite all the hype about Windows 7 being ready for prime-time even though it's still in release candidate stage, it's still safer to perform a test run of Windows 7 beta in a virtual environment before actually installing it onto your computer. The latest version of Sun's open source virtualization software can let you do that on Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X, any Linux distro or even Sun's rather uncommon Solaris OS.
A newly installed Virtual Box
Once Virtual Box is installed, you can then run any guest x86-based OS. This is particularly interesting for people who like to try out other operating systems without having to go through the more cumbersome process (not to mention risky) of actually installing them. If you've got enough memory in your system, you can even test run multiple OSes all at the same time (see image below).
This version now supports Direct3D for Windows guests and OpenGL for all others. Therefore, you can seamlessly test the 3D features of say, Windows 7 or the latest Ubuntu on your host system. This also means that you can run computer modeling and 3D design apps. If that doesn't pique your interest, then perhaps the thought of running graphics-intensive Windows games on Linux will. Getting interested? (Naturally, you won't get anywhere near the speed of 3D
acceleration running on native graphics hardware, but unlike some
previous virtualisation environments, it allows software that relies on
3D acceleration to run.)
Other new features included are:
- the ability to support up to 32 vCPUs per guest
- Hypervisor enhancements for SMP
- and an updated API platform
Since it's an open source project, those who would like to compile and build their own product may download the Open Source Edition. Once you get to that link, scroll down to the bottom. If you don't care about the source code and would just like to check it out, just click that link and choose from their wide selection of binaries that will run directly on supported operating systems.