Denmark bans Google software and laptops in school
(reclaimthenet.org)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (19)
sorted by:
Booting off of a live USB will give you a feel, and is worthwhile and easy. You can play with different ones until you find a distro you like. Plus you can reverse everything by pulling the stick out of the socket.
If you have an internet connection, I think you should be able to do the Linux install straight from the live USB. That will wipe out your current OS, of course, so take care. Then you're committed.
Next install VirtualBox. You would use your distro's package manager: apt, yum, zypher, etc. to install it, or get it directly from Oracle. Then start VirtualBox. You will now have, to all appearances, an empty computer with hardware, but no OS. It's all virtual, being emulated by your Linux system, but you can treat it as a real machine. Point it's CD/DVD drive to the Windows install disk/usb (I stick with Windows XP if I can get away with it), and run the installer.
When you're done, you have a single huge file that is a dynamic snapshot of an installed version of Windows that VBox can start up at anytime. Once this is set, you install your CAD and other Windows apps on that virtual machine (again, just a single file).
It's amazing technology when you really think about it, but it really isn't that difficult to pull off. There are lots of moving pieces, and sometimes little things can stump you. That's when you need to jump onto a running machine and search StackOverflow for an answer.
If you can install anything on the USB OS, and there is enough room, you might be able to run through this whole process directly on the USB drive, just for practice. Not sure though.
Thanks for the summary, saving it for reference when I finally stop being lazy.
I always assumed the virtual box or emulators as something like the video game emulators, as the emulator needing more power and resources than what is being emulated + the OS it's running on... but that sounds like it's much more efficient.
Correct, the emulated machine sucks up resource and power from the host, but it is well managed so things stay smooth. But if you're playing games inside the emulator...