VirtualBox has gained a lot of popularity, but I've not invested time to learn it. I've been using the free VMware Player to run my Win XP virtual machine on Linux for several years. On Kubuntu 9.10 it's running faster and looking better than ever. Here's how I did it -- I'm not going to relate every keystroke, but you can ask if you really get stuck.
My experience is (a) VMware Player runs best in the /home/user directory, rather than from some other partition on your system it's been fine on its own partition for a year now, so I think that's OK, and (b) on an ext3 or ext4 filesystem. The XFS filesystem that I ran it on for the past 6 months really didn't like the big VM and started getting a little flaky, driving me to reinstall Kubuntu on an ext3 system and to set up VMware Player from scratch.
Also, don't forget that whatever size you intend for your Windows VM, you need to add that to the size that your Linux system needs -- please don't try to put a 10GB VM on an 8GB Linux partition! :P
1. Download the free VMware Player, Ver. 3.0 installer/tarball for your architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) from here. Prior to giving you access to the downloads, you will need to answer their questionnaire and give your e-mail address, so they can pester you with promotional stuff later. I always tell the truth -- my real name, e-mail address, and that it's for non-commercial (i.e. home) use. Save the installer somewhere safe in your data, and then I use a copy of the installer in the /tmp directory of my Linux system for such adventures -- copy the .bundle file there (plus save it somewhere permanently -- "/tmp" stuff goes away at shutdown), then, using the "sudo" prefix run the .bundle installer, accept the license, and the rest happens pretty automatically.
2. If it happens that there is some problem configuring the player, that's your signal that you need the any-any-update-117 patch. Google will help you find it (I've lost the link but kept the tarball). Download it to your favorite working directory, extract it there, change to the "install" subdirectory, and follow the instruction to ./runme.pl as root, and it will patch your vmware player. Then you'll need to run the player configuration routine sudo vmware-config.pl again. BTW, it's not unusual that you need to run that configuration routine after a kernel upgrade, so don't forget it. I didn't need the patch on my recent new installation of 8.04 (64-bit), but I dunno about other configurations.
EDIT: You need the any-any-117c patch for the 2.6.26 kernel in 8.10 -- see note below.
See edit below for patching on 2.6.29 kernel. No patch needed for 2.6.27 and later.
3. OK, you've got VMware Player 3 now, but no VM to run on it*. So next, and assuming you have a legal Windows XP installation CD, or some other OS of your choice including Linux Live CDs, you need to get a virtual machine, and make a virtual hard disk drive for it. Here's great guidance on the subject:
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/2...indows-xp.html
Just follow his instructions, regarding the .vmx file. You can skip the initial information about how to use Qemu to make a virtual disk (although I have done it that way) -- you only need to download his prefab virtual disk drives from here.
I downloaded his virtual disk collection and used the 8GB one for my Win XP virtual machine, which runs a proprietary genealogy database and typically uses 4 or 5 GB in total.
* EDIT 6 JUL 2010: Ver. 3.1 makes the virtual hard drive for you, at the time you install the guest OS. So all of this item 3 is obsolete for Ver. 3.1.
4. Finally, to make it really hum, you need the VMWare Tools, which includes the SVGA video driver for your Windows XP machine (or one of the other video drivers for other OSs). It is not given away in the form that you need it (an ISO file ready to burn to CD), but it IS given away in a form that you can extract it from. So, here's the instruction to perform the extraction, and then you burn the ISO to a blank CD in the normal manner, and that becomes your "video driver" source for the virtual Win XP.
EDIT January 2010: VMware Tools are now included in Ver. 3.0 and 3.1, such that the extraction process described above is not necessary.
5. Once you've installed your Windows XP on the VM, you can then feed it the CD that you made in Step 4 and load the VMware Tools, which will bring in the SVGA video driver, and it will give you as smooth a Win XP interface as you've ever seen. In a Kubuntu window!
SAVE YOUR DOWNLOADED TARBALLS (VMware Player, patch files, initial .vmx file, and empty virtual hard drive) somewhere safe (like on a CD ROM)!
Have fun! 8)
8.10 UPDATE:
For Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex, the procedure is the same except for Step 2. The new 2.6.26 kernels cause the installer to exit with error, so you must download and patch with vmware-any-any-update-117c. Get it here. Save it alongside the VMware Player 2.0.4 tarball, and unpack them both at the same time. First run the basic install and let it error out. Then run the "runme.pl" file in the patch, and it will complete the installation and configuration. 8)
Kernel 2.6.27 -- no patch available yet (31 AUG 08) -- VMware Player will not compile.
EDIT: For Intrepid Ibex (24 Oct 08)
1. Install VMWare Player 2.5, as per Fintan's excellent guidance here:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3097965.0
including Unity if you wish.
2. To fix a problem with certain keys not working inside the VM window (on mine it was the arrow keys and the Del key):
Fix #1 for keyboard weirdness in VMWare Player 2.5 on Intrepid Ibex is here:
http://nthrbldyblg.blogspot.com/2008...rd-effect.html
To recap the fix:
Put this in ~/.vmware/config:
xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
done!
Fix #2 is found in this unlikely link:
http://www.ultimalinux.com/wiki/VMware
and consists of adding only this one line to the ~/.vmware/config file:
xkeymap.nokeycodeMap=true
and this one works too!
EDIT for kernel 2.6.29/30: (23 AUG 2009)
The new VMware Player is version 2.5.3. VMWare Player 2.5.3 is running correctly on Kubuntu 9.04 (kernel 2.6.28/29) and correctly on sidux kernel 2.6.30, with no patch needed. On Kubuntu 9.04, the vmnet sometimes does not start correctly at boot time, so launching VMWare Player might throw a "bridged network is down" error. To remedy this, prior to launching VMWare Player, it is necessary to issue this command in the Konsole:
Then you can start VMWare Player and bridged networking will be available.
EDIT for kernel 2.6.31: (21 SEP 2009) There is an issue with the keyboard and mouse interface -- basically, the host OS (Kubuntu) keeps grabbing the mouse control back from the guest OS -- totally annoying! Here is the fix:
Add a line "export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force" to /etc/vmware/bootstrap. Restart your system, restart VMware Player, and the VM should work as expected.
EDIT for VMWare Ver. 3.0: (30 OCT 2009) Coincidentally timed with release of Kubuntu 9.10, VMware released ver. 3.0 of their virtualizing products. Although further testing is needed, it appears that it resolves the mouse/keyboard focus problem outside the 640x480 VGA area -- here's my note on the installation of VMware Player 3.0.
My experience is (a) VMware Player runs best in the /home/user directory, rather than from some other partition on your system it's been fine on its own partition for a year now, so I think that's OK, and (b) on an ext3 or ext4 filesystem. The XFS filesystem that I ran it on for the past 6 months really didn't like the big VM and started getting a little flaky, driving me to reinstall Kubuntu on an ext3 system and to set up VMware Player from scratch.
Also, don't forget that whatever size you intend for your Windows VM, you need to add that to the size that your Linux system needs -- please don't try to put a 10GB VM on an 8GB Linux partition! :P
1. Download the free VMware Player, Ver. 3.0 installer/tarball for your architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) from here. Prior to giving you access to the downloads, you will need to answer their questionnaire and give your e-mail address, so they can pester you with promotional stuff later. I always tell the truth -- my real name, e-mail address, and that it's for non-commercial (i.e. home) use. Save the installer somewhere safe in your data, and then I use a copy of the installer in the /tmp directory of my Linux system for such adventures -- copy the .bundle file there (plus save it somewhere permanently -- "/tmp" stuff goes away at shutdown), then, using the "sudo" prefix run the .bundle installer, accept the license, and the rest happens pretty automatically.
2. If it happens that there is some problem configuring the player, that's your signal that you need the any-any-update-117 patch. Google will help you find it (I've lost the link but kept the tarball). Download it to your favorite working directory, extract it there, change to the "install" subdirectory, and follow the instruction to ./runme.pl as root, and it will patch your vmware player. Then you'll need to run the player configuration routine sudo vmware-config.pl again. BTW, it's not unusual that you need to run that configuration routine after a kernel upgrade, so don't forget it. I didn't need the patch on my recent new installation of 8.04 (64-bit), but I dunno about other configurations.
EDIT: You need the any-any-117c patch for the 2.6.26 kernel in 8.10 -- see note below.
See edit below for patching on 2.6.29 kernel. No patch needed for 2.6.27 and later.
3. OK, you've got VMware Player 3 now, but no VM to run on it*. So next, and assuming you have a legal Windows XP installation CD, or some other OS of your choice including Linux Live CDs, you need to get a virtual machine, and make a virtual hard disk drive for it. Here's great guidance on the subject:
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/2...indows-xp.html
Just follow his instructions, regarding the .vmx file. You can skip the initial information about how to use Qemu to make a virtual disk (although I have done it that way) -- you only need to download his prefab virtual disk drives from here.
I downloaded his virtual disk collection and used the 8GB one for my Win XP virtual machine, which runs a proprietary genealogy database and typically uses 4 or 5 GB in total.
* EDIT 6 JUL 2010: Ver. 3.1 makes the virtual hard drive for you, at the time you install the guest OS. So all of this item 3 is obsolete for Ver. 3.1.
4. Finally, to make it really hum, you need the VMWare Tools, which includes the SVGA video driver for your Windows XP machine (or one of the other video drivers for other OSs). It is not given away in the form that you need it (an ISO file ready to burn to CD), but it IS given away in a form that you can extract it from. So, here's the instruction to perform the extraction, and then you burn the ISO to a blank CD in the normal manner, and that becomes your "video driver" source for the virtual Win XP.
EDIT January 2010: VMware Tools are now included in Ver. 3.0 and 3.1, such that the extraction process described above is not necessary.
5. Once you've installed your Windows XP on the VM, you can then feed it the CD that you made in Step 4 and load the VMware Tools, which will bring in the SVGA video driver, and it will give you as smooth a Win XP interface as you've ever seen. In a Kubuntu window!
SAVE YOUR DOWNLOADED TARBALLS (VMware Player, patch files, initial .vmx file, and empty virtual hard drive) somewhere safe (like on a CD ROM)!
Have fun! 8)
8.10 UPDATE:
For Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex, the procedure is the same except for Step 2. The new 2.6.26 kernels cause the installer to exit with error, so you must download and patch with vmware-any-any-update-117c. Get it here. Save it alongside the VMware Player 2.0.4 tarball, and unpack them both at the same time. First run the basic install and let it error out. Then run the "runme.pl" file in the patch, and it will complete the installation and configuration. 8)
Kernel 2.6.27 -- no patch available yet (31 AUG 08) -- VMware Player will not compile.
EDIT: For Intrepid Ibex (24 Oct 08)
1. Install VMWare Player 2.5, as per Fintan's excellent guidance here:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3097965.0
including Unity if you wish.
2. To fix a problem with certain keys not working inside the VM window (on mine it was the arrow keys and the Del key):
Fix #1 for keyboard weirdness in VMWare Player 2.5 on Intrepid Ibex is here:
http://nthrbldyblg.blogspot.com/2008...rd-effect.html
To recap the fix:
Put this in ~/.vmware/config:
xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
done!
Fix #2 is found in this unlikely link:
http://www.ultimalinux.com/wiki/VMware
and consists of adding only this one line to the ~/.vmware/config file:
xkeymap.nokeycodeMap=true
and this one works too!
EDIT for kernel 2.6.29/30: (23 AUG 2009)
The new VMware Player is version 2.5.3. VMWare Player 2.5.3 is running correctly on Kubuntu 9.04 (kernel 2.6.28/29) and correctly on sidux kernel 2.6.30, with no patch needed. On Kubuntu 9.04, the vmnet sometimes does not start correctly at boot time, so launching VMWare Player might throw a "bridged network is down" error. To remedy this, prior to launching VMWare Player, it is necessary to issue this command in the Konsole:
Code:
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart
EDIT for kernel 2.6.31: (21 SEP 2009) There is an issue with the keyboard and mouse interface -- basically, the host OS (Kubuntu) keeps grabbing the mouse control back from the guest OS -- totally annoying! Here is the fix:
Add a line "export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force" to /etc/vmware/bootstrap. Restart your system, restart VMware Player, and the VM should work as expected.
EDIT for VMWare Ver. 3.0: (30 OCT 2009) Coincidentally timed with release of Kubuntu 9.10, VMware released ver. 3.0 of their virtualizing products. Although further testing is needed, it appears that it resolves the mouse/keyboard focus problem outside the 640x480 VGA area -- here's my note on the installation of VMware Player 3.0.
And I am in HEAVEN!!! 
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