I have 2 VirtualBox machines running Windows 7 and Debian respectively, i have them in hand to test stuff in general, and a PCem Windows 98 machine to run older games.
I don't know if DOSBox counts as a virtual machine, but i have a Windows 3.11 installation on it that runs pretty well.
I have 2 VirtualBox machines running Windows 7 and Debian respectively, i have them in hand to test stuff in general, and a PCem Windows 98 machine to run older games.
I don't know if DOSBox counts as a virtual machine, but i have a Windows 3.11 installation on it that runs pretty well.
virtualbox runs pretty slow and qemu on windows is shit but i hear vmware is really good at least the older versions personally i use windows sandbox for malware testing and scambaiting but will sometimes load up vista or xp on hyperv
I personally use Virtualbox for Testing a site before I go onto it so my host won't get the computer AIDS because that would suck balls to fix if I got a hard to deal with one.
Mostly to break things inconsequentially, test out different distros/OS's, and privacy.
If someone wants me to download software, even if just to help them test their own stuff, I do it in a VM.
My primary use for VMs has always been to just explore different operating systems. My current VMs include TempleOS, MenuetOS, Haiku, Red Star (the North Korean one), Windows XP, and Windows 10 and will be adding ReactOS and Astra Linux (the one used by the Russian military). Learning how they work, how their files are organized, and any scripting languages they use, even if it's just the equivalent of "echo 'hello world'" can be really fascinating. Nostalgia also factors in sometimes,
I was also enrolled in a prep course at my local community college for a security cert. We were given a Windows 10 VM that was used for a number of different purposes. I ended up dropping the course for other things going on but keeping all the material, including the VM, which my computer at the time choked on anyway (never getting anything without upgradeable memory again). Now that I have something powerful enough to run it, I'm going through the course again.
Since I did an upgrade from an i5-4460 to an i5-12400 I decided to give PCem/86Box a go, since on the old CPU it would fail to maintain 100% emulation speed with a Pentium MMX, and right now?
Stable 100% emulation. 3dfx Voodoo 2 in SLI is also emulated, but I haven't managed to run a game through it yet. PCem/86Box is fun, because it doesn't just virtualize the OS, it emulates the entire computer. The motherboard, the BIOS, the additional hardware, everything. That also means it needs more processing power as it has to emulate CPU cycles in real life.
I have VMWare Workstation 16 Player with a Win98 OS. I've been TRYING to use it for old gaming (I followed this guide), specifically ones that need that "256 color" setting, but one specific game i want to play still won't work. I have DirectX installed that came with the game CD, but I'm still getting a "can't initialize DirectDraw" error. At first i thought it needed that 3dfxVooDoo shit but the readme just says DirectX is enough, so I'm out of ideas and just left it alone.
I use them to test kernel builds to see if the faggot can boot up, for example
Code:
# Enable KVM, reserve 256M of RAM, the recently built kernel and a testing image
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 256 -kernel vmlinuz-linux -initrd test.img
# This if I want to boot with UEFI (/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF.fd in Arch)
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 256 -bios OVMF.fd -kernel vmlinuz-linux -initrd test.img
I have VMWare Workstation 16 Player with a Win98 OS. I've been TRYING to use it for old gaming (I followed this guide), specifically ones that need that "256 color" setting, but one specific game i want to play still won't work. I have DirectX installed that came with the game CD, but I'm still getting a "can't initialize DirectDraw" error. At first i thought it needed that 3dfxVooDoo shit but the readme just says DirectX is enough, so I'm out of ideas and just left it alone. View attachment 3202295View attachment 3202296
VMware doesn't have any kind of 3D acceleration for Windows 98. You can either use DOSBox-X or PCem/86Box, where the former has 3dfx Voodoo emulation while the latter emulates an entire PC with whatever 3dfx Voodoo you want, but do keep in mind that PCem/86Box will need more processing power to stably run a high-end system from the era.
VMware doesn't have any kind of 3D acceleration for Windows 98. You can either use DOSBox-X or PCem/86Box, where the former has 3dfx Voodoo emulation while the latter emulates an entire PC with whatever 3dfx Voodoo you want, but do keep in mind that PCem/86Box will need more processing power to stably run a high-end system from the era.
That sucks. Fortunately I found a work-around by installing WinXP SP3 instead and just setting the game compatibility to Win95 256Colors 640x480 and that did the trick.
Previously my DNS server and my public-facing Tor sites were also hosted on VMs, but these days I give them their own hardware. This is partially because a security solution I implemented for my Tor sites is hardware-based and simply couldn't be virtualized.
Testing Linux Distros, on Windoze, that are running other Linux Distros! I'm speshul!
But apart from that?
1: Watching hardcore midget tranny porn on Granny's computer. She'll never know.
2: Watching illegal locker sites that rival netflix on my Mum's computer. ISP will never know.
3: Downloading torrentz and juarez on either of their computers.
4: Doing all of that shit on my own computer, because I don't even want myself to know!
The wonderful world of VM's have a million and one uses. Not least testing Linux distros. Found a good site the other day with pre-made OS images: https://www.osboxes.org/
Provides both Virtual Box and VM Ware images. Kind of handy. If you don't know why they are handy, don't worry yet. It's best to make up your own images to start with. Learn the tech. But when some kind soul makes up an image you know you can utilise on your machine, it's a nice thing to have. Even people who make up their own boxes of chocolates like getting a free box of chocolates sometimes. Saves time. You can learn things.
News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.
distrowatch.com
Is a good place to get a feel for what's hot and what's not in the linux world. You can find finely tuned graphics distros here or finely tuned audio distros here. And they will contain free Open Source software. So you know you are never breaking the law, breaking the law,
They can also contain other pre-sanctioned software where the developer has given his blessing for his program to be used in a distro. AVLinux and EnergyXT for example - https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=avlinux
It's at no.53 at the moment, but it's a great distro for anyone doing either/both audio or/and graphics work.
Specialist distros like this will never become no.1 in the field but they do their job. MX Linux and Antix (it's little brother/sister) just work superb on any mid-range or sometimes lower-range computer. They have kind of nudged Linux Mint out of the no.1 space. Linux Mint was my first love. Still dilly dally sometimes. But MX/Antix is best friend now.
And to make matters worse, you have to pay something like a fiver for a copy. I did. I do regularly. It's worth having if you work with computers of build them or fix them. It's a solid distro that you can get help for if you need it. Just don't expect it straight away, and don't expect anything other than a terse tone.
I've run Virtual Machines of this USB stick that run Windoze and work very well. Loads of tools and also can boot in to RAM so that makes it very very fast, just make sure you have enough of the 8GB of RAM needed when it is decompressed to disk. Use the 'toram' cheat code iirc. It will work anyway.
Virtual machines are great, but just remember that when it comes to old drivers and whatnot then sometimes they don't work that well, if at all. Some people use them with great success with a lot of help from their friends, others can't get shit to work no matter what. Suck it and see.
Virtual machines are one of the great marvels of the modern computer age and they are there for everyone to take advantage of for free. You can use them for a lot of other uses as well. You can even set up VPN's on them within other VM's that you have set up. You can go very deep. But they all break sooner rather than later with that shit. I know how far I can go and with what OS's and VPN's. But it's not unusual to run Windows within a Linux VM that is running on a Windoze box. Or was it the other way around? Or both?
I'm mostly a windoze guy, but yeah, I set up a VM on my Mum's machine so I can whack myself half to death with brazilian tranny porn (I'm sorry mum, you know I'm ugly), and also to watch the latest episode of Billions (ngl, big fan fam) without it getting flagged by their ISP. BT internet blocks all those sites as malware, but worse than that, they put you on a list.
