virtual machine software recommended for a computer with low resources

Question

Hello my machine is a XEON cpu 1.4 ghz with 128 mb of ram, it is running windows xp and I need to use linux ocasionally, for some reasons I cannot install linux and I cannot use a bootable distribution such as knoppix, so my question is can anyone recommend me a virtual machine software to load a simple linux without gui?. I have ben tryin vmware but i do not have enough memory. Thank you.

Answer 1

I don't think you'll fare any better with the other virtual machines out there. 128 Mb is probably too small in any case, unless you're running a really small machine. 32 Mb, perhaps. You'll also need to find a Linux distribution which will run in that kind of memory. Try googling on "damn small linux", I think.

Answer 2

There's nothing you'll want to run on a machine as weak as that.

If it's a hosted solution like VMware Server... you need a beefy box with gobs of ram to make up for the 25-50% overhead.

Answer 3

Your problem is there is no way to do what you want.

A virtual machine has to have resources (RAM,CPU time, etc) to run the guest operating system. This is in addition to the resources needed by your host operating system, hardware drivers, applications running in the background, etc.

With only 128MB of RAM (which is what I'd consider bare minimum to run WIndows XP, let alone run it well) you'd have to give part of that over to your guest operating system, so XP would have even less to run with. And most of your software that runs virtual machines (VM-Ware, Virtual PCD, Virtual Box, etc) have additional drivers that they need to run in the background as well.

To pursue using a virtual machine with your PC, I'd say you need to add additional RAM to it before proceeding at all.

If you want to continue to pursue running Linux on your PC, without adding additional hardware, I would look at trying to get Windows XP and Linux to dual-boot. This would allow for all of your PC's resources to be given over to either Linux or Windows XP, depending on which one you needed to use at the time.

-- Steve Olson

Answer 4

You're really asking for trouble with only 128MB of memory. You might try coLinux though.

Answer 5

As an alternative to running a VM, you could try cygwin or gnuwin32 to run many *nix commands natively.

Answer 6

Hello I have debian running with coLinux, I cannot choose the Mark Ransom as best answer because I was not login when I posted the answer and I closed my browser accidentally, is there any way to make the answer of Mark the best one?. Thanks for all your answers.