digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

How to run full Windows XP under Ubuntu Dapper

maconstuff.blogspot.com — A how to for using the QEMU virtual PC to load up a full install of Windows XP SP2 under Ubuntu Dapper.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 18, 2006

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

49 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22@TubaTechno

    it's got nothing to do with trying to avoid Microsoft at all. If you're developing a cross platform application or even web sites this sort of virtualisation allows you to do a lot of testing on a single physical machine. Can you tell me how you'd test, for example, a website, with IE4, IE5 ,IE6 etc..? Using virtual machines allows a developer to run all sorts of OS's at their fingertips. There are other advantages too... If I'm working in a virtual machine and I find a problem with an application then I can give another developer a copy of the VM (or we can collaborate on one) to try to resolve the problem.

    Don't be so negative - Just because you can't see a use for it doesn't mean there isn't one.
  • neko, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Yeah,.. QEMU's great, but the only reason I keep my winXP machine around is the games, which wouldn't be fun under a processor emulator.

    It's a decent solution for small businesses who only have one or two must-have legacy apps though. Assuming it doesn't already work with Wine ;)
  • burke, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14See, that's the catch. Qemu is a bit of a niche thing I think. If you want to run just a small program, might as well use wine. If you've got a big program like VS.NET, unless your computer has the word 'CRAY' embossed on its side, you're probably far better off rebooting into XP, or at least investing some money and/or bandwidth in... whatever that program's called.... The one like Qemu but $500 and way faster. (EDIT: It's VMWare Workstation.)
  • burke, on 10/12/2007, -13/+24Oh my God. VS.NET in XP under QEMU? That would rank up around "Oprah after brunch" on the sluggish scale.
  • gookie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Here's the guide:

    HOWTO: Windows (XP) on Ubuntu with VMWare Server
    http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=183209
  • FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@burke

    "The one like Qemu but $500 and way faster. (EDIT: It's VMWare Workstation.)"..

    No, no, no, no, no!

    This should be:

    "The one like Qemu which is *free* and way faster. (EDIT: it's VMWare Server)"

    The advantage of vmware server, aside from its freeness and speed, is that if you have a pretty good machine you can get your vitrual machines to boot with your normal OS. This means connecting to, for example, a running copy of XP takes seconds and you're not waiting for it to boot.... VMWare server also allows you to connect to a virtual machine just by using a remote client.

    IMHO making vmware player and server free were some of the smartest decisions those guys made...

  • atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You can create the image with qemu but use VMPlayer to run it, that should be faster.
    http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/16/1940214
  • Haroldx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Vmware. 'Nuff said.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Question - is it possible to say take a snapshot image of my current XP install, burn it to DVD as an image, then install Ubuntu Dapper on my hard drive wiping out XP from my drive, then reload my original XP image within Ubuntu using QEMU? I'd really like to run Dapper as my main OS, but have the ability to return to my current XP install without having to dual-boot.

    What about VMWare?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Why would I want to run XP under Ubuntu ? ...
    No ...really ...great digg
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6That is exactly what I need =) Use Ubuntu as the main os and windows for some of my programs. Thank You, great review.
  • thecwin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Anyone complaining of the speed of qemu tried it with the accelerator/kqemu?

    Still not as fast as VMWare but kills standard qemu. 30s vs 4s Xfce4 startup.
  • trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sign up at http://ubuntuforums.org and post the question there. The forums are really great for the new and experienced alike ( which makes it good for a Win admin trying linux for the first time as you are kind of both )
  • macjonesnz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Not correct, if you read the bottom of the blog post you can install SP2 after, using an 'F8', safe mode reboot.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4See also http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html for a step by step tutorial.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Question - is it possible to say take a snapshot image of my current XP install, burn it to DVD as an image, then install Ubuntu Dapper on my hard drive wiping out XP from my drive, then reload my original XP image within Ubuntu using QEMU?"

    With VMWare yes (see: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html ). I was able to run a Ghost image of Windows 95. In short: you Ghost your current XP installation, install Ubuntu and use (for example) the free VMWare Player to run XP. Instead of inserting the XP installation CD as explained in http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html you just insert the first Ghost CD, boot the VM and restore the copy. Next you might want to write the VM disk image to a DVD as a back up.
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6anything is faster than qemu, why not try looking in ubuntuforums for several better guides using VMwaresever, they're better than this, theirs one for XP, and Vista as well as one thats just about setting up the server
  • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4kernel extensions? I _just_ installed it, and all I had to do was:

    1) download
    2) extract
    3) run scripts that came with it, accept practically all defaults

    tada
  • starsky51, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@thesimple: bit off-topic but here goes. i opened up synaptic, selected Wine and applied. After that I right clicked an exe file on my Desktop, Open With... and selected Wine from the application list. Wine then built a default config file and ran my exe file.

    If you are running an installshield exe file. you can usually find the installed files in \home\-username-\c_drive\Program Files\

    1 and a half minutes of my life i'll never get back. Not sure why it took you so long.
  • ratzfatz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I know this might be slightly off topic: I wonder when someone will show up with an installation of Parallels Desktop on a MacBook running Ubuntu with Windows XP installed - running Mac OS 8.5 with SheepShaver or Basilisk. Is this called the emulation of a Mac OS 8.5 in emulated virtualization of Windows XP on a virtualized host called Ubunto inside OSX on the MacBook? All of the OSes should have access to the Internet of course. I don't expect it to be wicked fast inside OS 8.5 (who knows?) but I bet we'll see something like this within the next couple days. Summer can be boring, as we know. Who takes on on that? The Mac became quite universal.
  • thesimplefix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Anyone know how to get Wine to install anything in Ubuntu Dapper? The Wine Wiki was of no help yesterday....1 and 1/2 hours of my life I will never see again
  • jrobinson5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Do you have the Universe repositories enabled? (I assume you're using ubuntu.)
    Otherwise:
    sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
    Then uncomment (remove the #) from all the lines starting with #deb and save the file.
  • nailer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"VS.NET in XP under QEMU? That would rank up around "Oprah after brunch" on the sluggish scale."

    With the kqemu module, it should be as fast as VMWare.

    Albeit kqemu is currently closed source.
  • majormar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For the answer you should check out the first episode of "the_source". We do a detailed review of QEMU on FC4 and show you how to get a Windows image up and running. http://www.thesourceshow.org
    Also, as pointed out in other comments, be sure you run kqemu if you want good emulation speeds. Last time I checked this was not included if you install the binary versions that come with FC and Ubuntu.
  • macjonesnz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Google "qvm86" for an open source accelerator.

    "qvm86 is a kernel module to provide x86 virtualisation capabilities for the qemu emulator. Virtualisation allows "emulated" code to be run natively on the host cpu, using the CPU protection mechanisms to intercept and emulate priveleged events."
  • xiangxianni, on 01/06/2009, -0/+2You also can get some good guide from tips5
    http://www.tips5.com
  • thesimplefix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@starsky51 -- sorry for being somewhat off topic, and I'm a linux newbie, but I did what you said and no go. I got as far as installing wine via synaptec. I ran winecfg (had little/no idea what do with it).... I attempted to install a program via winecfg's add application option (I tried Office2k3, then officeXP, and even Office2k), but it's a no go. Even when I select the *.exe file from cd and right click - open with wine does not appear on the list of istalled appz. -- nor does it show under the "applications" menu in ubuntu....

    I'm a Windows systems administrator (i hate the crap, but it pays the bills), and I want to learn more about Linux.... I cut myself off cold turkey from Windows at home, but I need office to check to see if the formatting of my documents appear correctly that I created in OO.o (work documents, and my resume). Any help is appreciated
  • Hatuey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting!
  • eliteturbo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2michael@michael-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install qemu
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree... Done
    E: Couldn't find package qemu

    YES!
  • richbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree to a point, in that Wine doesn't really get you very far with some Windows apps. Specifically, I have some apps with copy-protection (armadillo IIFC), and guess what?... dead in the water with Wine.

    Here's to hoping that a full VM solves these sorts of problems.

    rich
  • jrobinson5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No, you can also use QEMU with other operating systems, such as various linux distrobutions
  • firemaker103, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Why not vmware player? Free, functional, and waaaaaay faster then QEMU.
    Heck, on QEMU, DSL was slow...
  • ahmerhussain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I wonder if this can be done in Fedora Core?

    Also, can QEMU be used to boot an already existing install of windows xp?
  • jrobinson5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So is there any way to emulate the intel version of OSX?
  • crossers, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1I think second time I see this article! but it's good one!
    http://www.shpe-sac.org
    http://www.ocflex.com/
    http://www.trgovinca.org
    http://www.chasr.org/
  • masskurec, on 03/03/2009, -0/+1vmware will do the trick

    http://xptweak.net
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Better option: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html
  • ratzfatz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Ahem - go and check for yourself:

    http://www.parallels.com/

    The Mac solution is NOT listed on first place......
  • Blindbeard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Does it need a windows install disc to run Qemu?
  • Aklblue, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Using the release version of XP pro does not work. It fails to correctly associate the CD key at the first reboot. You need to use a version with SP2 integrated.

    Performance is reasonable, but if you use the KQemu accelerator, it will run at near native speeds.
  • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -9/+6http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

    Download it, it's free.

    And you _won't_ need a tutorial to figure it out.
  • Pirkel, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Windows xp has been installing for 2 hours now...
  • mezoko, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Man use vmware player, it free and it not that hard to make and image, a ubuntu forum link how to install windows is already posted.
  • ivachen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2there's always citrix for your legacy apps...
  • jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -13/+9For those who want to know about Cray http://www.cray.com/
  • Jaymoon, on 10/12/2007, -13/+6Why not just use another computer? o.O
  • TubaTechno, on 10/12/2007, -19/+8i think thats pretty ridiculuous.....programmers doing code for WIndows in Linux, but then having to boot Windows to test....unnecessary steps. What lengths will people go to avoid Microsoft?
  • CaseyUCF, on 10/12/2007, -17/+4who cares?
  • jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -24/+8This article may be relevant for that .0001% of the developers out there who mainly program in Linux yet still need to boot XP to test the software they just created without a reboot. Its not often that a developer wouldn't just opt to reboot but hey its good to have the option to emulate XP.

    Besides what did Oprah ever do to you? Last I heard she was giving away iPods and cars... oh wait you didn't get one did you?

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.