Virtualization

Virtualization is the ability to run several different OS on one host.

VirtualBox

• VirtualBox is an excellent free virtualization program. Very nice and polished GUI, it can run Windows without any problems and is really impressive.

• To get a resolution of 1280*1024, be sure to install the VirtualBox additions (emerge this, then install them inside the virtual machine, which means inside Windows via the ISO image).

Network

• Inside a VBox host, there is another internal NAT. You can give the guest an IP of 10.0.2.x; the gateway should be 10.0.2.2 (this is actually the address of your host). Note that you should *not* give an IP of 192.168.0.x to a VM guest!

Managing Media (Hard Drives)

• To duplicate a HD, you must use the VBoxManage program with the clonehd argument (and give the absolute path to the disk to be cloned). This allows the new disk to have a different uuid and thus be used without problems.

DirectX

• DirectX does not work on VirtualBox, which means that the DX PNG transparency fix does not work on IE 6 on a VirtualBox VM.