Four operating systems running simultaneously!

[magburner]

Hi, I have been working on this one for a week or so now, and I have finally managed to get four separate and complete operating systems to run on my PC simultaneously! Yes, not one, not two, not three but four complete operating systems! This is by no means a unique feat, or even impossible to accomplish, but you may not be aware that it is possible, so I thought that I would create this thread to show you what I have done! 👍

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As you can see from the image, I have three separate taskbar groupings. The host Windows 7 taskbar at the bottom, the black Ubuntu 10.04 taskbar at both the bottom and the top, and finally a windows XP taskbar. I can access any program from any of the three operating systems with GUIs, and they run seamlessly, with out any noticeable latency issues. I also have Ubuntu server 9.10 64 running in a window, but that does not have a GUI. All of the operating systems appear on my home network as actual network addresses, and all have internet access.

When all four operating systems are running, Ram usage is at about 60%, thought this could be lower if I shared less RAM with the guests. Under heavy load the CPU runs between 50% and 60%, when idling, it runs at around 10%. My PC specs are: Q6600 quad core processor, 8gb EPP 1066mhz DDR2 RAM, and a 7950GX2 graphics card (that needs upgrading!), I'm also running Windows 7 64.

How did I do this? Simple, I used the superb VirtualBox virtualisation software that is free from Sun/Oracle. It is really easy to setup and run a virtual machine, but you do have to have a processor that has inbuilt virtualisation technology, plenty of ram is also an advantage.

Here are the statistics for the guest operating systems I have installed and running:

Guest #1: Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 64 (1gb ram, 128mb graphics, 1 core)

This is the latest release of Ubuntu desktop, and Is the pretty stable. I have read that there are problems with the release, there may be, but I have not run into any as of yet. I like Linux, but not enough to have it running on its own partition. Running it virtually gives me the best of both worlds - Windows familiarity, and Linux access.

Guest #2 Ubuntu Server 9.10 64 (1gb ram, 16mb graphics, 1 core)

This is a development server that I plan to use to familiarise myself with the web server environment. It is CLI only, so there is no GUI to speak of, just the command prompt. I have installed a fully fledged Apache2 webserver, MYSQL server, PHP, SSH Server, and created a WEBDAV server for HTTP file transfers. In the future I plan to use this a server for my own webpages, but for now, it is only available over my home network.

Guest #3 Windows XP SP2 32 (2gb ram, 128mb graphics, 1 core)

This OS was the reason I got to this point in the first place! I was dismayed to find that Windows 7 Professional's XP mode was rather naff, after shelling out extra for it. Why? Well, the whole reason I wanted to use the XP mode was to utilise some legacy graphics programs I still regularly used. Unfortunately for XP Mode it only uses 16 bit graphics, so it was basically useless for image editing. VirtualBox on the other hand, has 32bit graphics, so I can happily use my legacy applications.

The upcoming 3.2 release of VirtualBox will apparently support experimental use of Mac OS guests, so In the future I may install a Mac OS too,, but I will have to purchase the OS first, so that is not on the cards at the moment.

Have any of you guys managed to run a similar amount of operating systems, or maybe, even more? 👍

 

[GT3mich]

Interesting. Did you have to install fresh versions of the OS or existing copies? I would like to run XP and windows 7 at the same time. I don't want to reinstall them. If that's the case I'll stay with 7.

 

[Flerbizky]

Old Old Old Old picture..

Debian running as guest on MS Virtual PC on XP running as a guest on VMWare on top of Ubuntu..

On a Dell D610 laptop with 2Gb ram and a single 5400rpm disk, it wasn't fast though (-:

 

[BobK]

You realize, of course, that you now need to install Cygwin on at least one virtual machine, and wine on another

I've played around with emulation, and would have to agree that Sun's VirtualBox is an excellent package. I don't use it on a day to day basis, though, since I have both a dedicated linux (Slackware 12.2) and Windows (XP) machine (and a third running Debian "lenny" that mostly just sits there powered down).

And yes I have wine, but not Cygwin (yet).

I also have dosbox on both the linux and XP machines, which actually fulfills my needs better (retro gaming, mostly).

That's impressive, though, running four OSes simultaneously!

 

[magburner]

Interesting. Did you have to install fresh versions of the OS or existing copies? I would like to run XP and windows 7 at the same time. I don't want to reinstall them. If that's the case I'll stay with 7.

Yes, I had to install a fresh copy of XP inside the virtual machine, the windows 7 host was not effected in any way. If you have Windows 7 already installed, go ahead and install XP in a virtual machine, it will not harm your host installation. 👍

Debian running as guest on MS Virtual PC on XP running as a guest on VMWare on top of Ubuntu..

Hey, that is cool. I didn't think that you could run a virtual machine inside a virtual machine. I know you cannot run VirtualBox inside itself, maybe you can with Virtual PC... 👍

You realize, of course, that you now need to install Cygwin on at least one virtual machine, and wine on another

I've thought about installing WINE, but I don't think I need to since I have a Windows system as the host. I'm not looking to replicate functions from diffferent operating systems, just to have extra functionality by having access to different operating systems. 👍

I also have dosbox on both the linux and XP machines, which actually fulfills my needs better (retro gaming, mostly).

That is next on my list, I have a copy of Sensible World Of Soccer, that needs resurrecting! 👍

That's impressive, though, running four OS's simultaneously!

Thanks pal. 👍 I'm not 100% on this, but I'm sure that VirtualBox needs one core of a processor per operating system to run, so I think that I am out of luck installing any more OS's. I don't follow AMD, but I have recently discovered that they produce six core processors, so maybe it might be possible to have six OS's running simultaneously - I would love to see that setup! 👍

 

[BobK]

It's my understanding, and I could well be wrong on this, that VirtualBox will use multiple cores if available (dedicating a core to a virtual OS). However it works just fine on single core systems, which my machines are. So give it a shot, at worst you're only out a few minutes of time.

 

[Flerbizky]

It's my understanding, and I could well be wrong on this, that VirtualBox will use multiple cores if available (dedicating a core to a virtual OS). However it works just fine on single core systems, which my machines are. So give it a shot, at worst you're only out a few minutes of time.

VBox is not depending on a number of cores, only that your CPU supports virtualization.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I don't follow AMD, but I have recently discovered that they produce six core processors, so maybe it might be possible to have six OS's running simultaneously - I would love to see that setup! 👍

As does Intel, but it's a bit pricey.

 

[Flerbizky]

I don't follow AMD, but I have recently discovered that they produce six core processors, so maybe it might be possible to have six OS's running simultaneously - I would love to see that setup! 👍

VBox is not depending on number of cores - with a chance of repeating myself. Only that your CPU supports virtualization.

 

[magburner]

As does Intel, but it's a bit pricey.

Do they? I was on the Intel website yesterday, and I never noticed any six core processors.

I was looking at this:

http://www.intel.com/en_uk/consumer/products/processors/corei7-specs.htm

Edit: I just found this, though it was not listed on that list :

http://www.intel.com/cd/products/services/emea/eng/processors/corei7ee/overview/405905.htm

VBox is not depending on number of cores - with a chance of repeating myself. Only that your CPU supports virtualization.

You will have to excuse my head, it is wired for comfort and not for speed...

I was just wondering because when you set up a VM, you can choose how many CPUs to attach to it. I wrongly assumed that you could only have as many VMs as cores on your CPU, because there is a limit to how many CPUs you can attach to in the GUI. I stand corrected though, thanks! 👍

 

[wfooshee]

Intel has quad-core and 8-core procs in their server lines, and AMD has 6- and 12-core. There are architectural differences that make them roughly equivalent, so an AMD 6 is not automatically "better" than an Intel quad. Virtualization does not separate the cores into individual processors, though, so you don't run XP on a core, then 7 on a core, etc.

 

[Legendary]

Old Old Old Old picture..

Debian running as guest on MS Virtual PC on XP running as a guest on VMWare on top of Ubuntu..

On a Dell D610 laptop with 2Gb ram and a single 5400rpm disk, it wasn't fast though (-:

My laptop I am using right now is a D600 with 512mb ram and 1.6ghz processor. I wouldnt even think about putting another OS on, it can barely cope with windows 7 as it is. In fact, yesterday is got up to 70 degrees celcius on 100% cpu load.

 

[irnbrutwinturbo]

Four operating systems are you managed to miss out the almighty OSX.

On the boss's Mac Pro, we did something similar, but then relalised it was pointless for us, fun but pointless.

 

[magburner]

Four operating systems are you managed to miss out the almighty OSX.

I didn't miss out OSX! I was going to grab a copy, by means of a 'five finger discount', but I am a reformed character now... I'm not supposed to be doing things like that.