Linux under Virtual PC

Anyone running Linux under Virtual PC? I can run (but not sure how to install) Damn Small Linux under it, but I'm looking for something that is also lightweight but contains other web browsers (like Konqueror). Basically a distribution with the minimum required for testing web sites (but with a good selection of browsers).

I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu, and it works great. 2 things you need to be aware of: Virtual PC doesn't support 24-bit colors (use 16-bit); and by default network access is off: you have to enable it (can be done easily in the GUI).

Knoppix? No need to even install, just mount the image and go. It includes Konqueror, not sure about other browsers though.

TommyCarlier wrote:

I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu, and it works great. 2 things you need to be aware of: Virtual PC doesn't support 24-bit colors (use 16-bit); and by default network access is off: you have to enable it (can be done easily in the GUI).

VM Additions for Linux are under development for Virtual Server 2005 though, if your aim is purely website testing you might want to consider that because the performance is much better than VPC2004. The drawbacks of Virtual Server are: requires IIS, harder to setup (stupid webbased interface) and no sound card emulation, but it outweighs the enormous performance difference for me.

The VM Additions for Linux are on Connect (not sure if you can still sign up), they only support a few distributions though (basically Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE).

I tried Virtual Server, but it is not as simple to use as Virtual PC. I don't want the advanced features that Server offers - just the ability to boot off an ISO image, a virtual hard drive and network access (for testing sites).

I don't have much RAM to spare (perhaps 256MB max - have 512MB RAM total) and Virtual Server seems more RAM hungry than Virtual PC.

If DSLinux had Konqueror (and Galeon/Epiphany - although as it uses the same rendering engine as Firefox then I suppose it is not needed) it would be ideal.

Knoppix seems like it has far more than I need. I don't need GIMP, Apache, OpenOffice, PHP, MySQL as these all run on Windows anyway. Is there a Knoppix derivative that is available as a small download (less than 100MB ideally)?

TommyCarlier wrote:

I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu, and it works great. 2 things you need to be aware of: Virtual PC doesn't support 24-bit colors (use 16-bit); and by default network access is off: you have to enable it (can be done easily in the GUI).

Actually, the latest version gave you the option to start in safe graphics mode. And it came as a live-CD iso, so you don't have to install it if you don't want to.

TommyCarlier wrote:

I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu, and it works great. 2 things you need to be aware of: Virtual PC doesn't support 24-bit colors (use 16-bit); and by default network access is off: you have to enable it (can be done easily in the GUI).

I have the same problem with Ubuntu as well.  Just doesn't seem to want to run in VirtualPC for me (either the install or Live version).

However I have used Virt PC quite a bit for running RedHat, SUSE, Fedora and Knoppix.  It's a little slow running on my laptop but you can't beat it for testing.

As someone already said, the VPC support for Linux is not good right now... so for the meanwhile, you may download free vmwareplayer and mount the pre-configured image of many distros.

I dunno, I set up an install for FC5 on VPC2k4 and I haven't checked it yet.

jaylittle wrote:

VMWare is worlds better for Linux.  That fact that they have their own XServer driver and X Mouse driver sure make a difference.   Ubuntu Dapper runs as smooth as silk on my Core Duo laptop.  The other thing I like about VMWare is the ability to use USB devices plugged into the Host Machine directly within the Virtual Machine.  

If only VPC would support that.... I'd be all over it.

I ran a couple of Linux distibutions on Virtual PC a while ago. Puppy Linux was one distribution, and I forget what the other was, it was a much larger one, but the graphics did not work properly on Virtual PC so I gave up. After that my free trial of Virtual PC ran out so I couldn't try anymore.

By the way, you said that you want something that is light weight and has a web browser, etc.; maybe you should check out Puppy Linux as it is small and has quite a few useful applications that come with it as standard.

Angus Higgins

Why do you need to use Linux to test numerous web browsers?

I mean Firefox, Mozilla, Epiphany, K-Meleon and Netscape all use the Gecko rendering engine and should work the same on Unix, Linux and Windows. Internet Explorer uses the Trident engine and should work the same on WINE as on Windows.

Anyway, use VMware until MS adds decent support for Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and other Unix/Unix-like distributions.


Regards,
Vincent

I tried Puppy thinking it may have KDE and thus Konqueror.

I do prefer DSLinux as well (just seems faster).

Is it possible to use Konqueror (the browser aspect), without needing to use KDE as the Window manager? It seems like a lot of overhead (KDE/Qt etc) just to test the KHTML rendering engine.

Of course if Safari ran on Windows, then there would be less need to run Linux (I am making the assumption that if CSS/JavaScript code works on Konqueror it works on Safari). Looking for a way of testing what Mac users may experience without actually getting one.

You can use Konqueror without running KDE (I've used it from Gnome) but you do still need to have KDE installed, just for the libraries etc. that Konqueror wants.

I run kubuntu linux under Virtual PC to do computer science homework (our department exclusively runs linux). The only problem was that when first installing you had to select "Use safe video mode", but other than that i've had no problems with it and it seems to run fast enough.