Rather than create Linux partitions on your hard drive and install You may be running Windows but wish to run some Linux programs that are not available for the Windows OS. There are several scenarios where virtual machines are necessary or can save time. What makes virtual machines an attractive option? What are the pros and cons for beginner geeks and power users? Other virtual machine software solutions, both open source and commercial but these three are probably the most popular Parallels which seems to have excellent reviews. Mac users seeking a stable Windows environment can choose Virtualization solutions such as VMWare (variable pricing) or Oracle’s VirtualBox (open source) which allow the guest operating systems to share the hardware resources of the host. It’s not a multi-boot scenario where you choose your preferred OS at startup but instead a situation where the existing OS installation acts as a host OS for an additional guest OS.

In the computing world, virtualization by way of virtual machines is used to describe a method of avoiding the purchase of multiple physical computers or servers, one for each operating system.Ī virtual machine is not a machine in the true sense of the word in that it has nothing to do with mechanical power, and has nothing to do with virtual reality (VR).īy using a virtual machine, end users with the necessary admin permissions can install an additional operating system (or indeed several)

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