Best Linux Emulator for XP or Vista?

I have a dual-boot setup with Vista Ultimate and XP already installed, and I was thinking of emulating/virtualizing Linux on one of them, as opposed to doing a "Neapolitan" hard drive bit. However, I'm wondering what the best virtualization tool would be for this? I thought about VMWare, but I dunno if Vista's chemistry would be the best with that just yet. On top of that, I think that Virtual PC can only run Microsoft OSes, am I not correct? So, that leads to mind the question, would Linux be better emulated through XP or through Vista? Keep in mind that since I have Ultimate, that does give me the right to that feature. However, I'm sort of curious about what would work best where.

DSL (Damn Small Linux) comes packed with an emulator (if you choose to load it that way) last I checked, albeit the OS is barebones (hence it being Damn Small) and rans a tad choppy due to emulation.

I myself would be interested in alternatives though.

I use parallels, and find it works very well.

I've used VMware player with the pre-rolled virtual machines, which also work quite well (but with less controls).

Why wouldn't you do a regular installation?

Emulation works best under XP, because it is not as much a memory/CPU hog as Vista. Of course, if you have enough speed and memory, you might not notice a difference.

VMWare is really your only option for Linux, too.

On Windows and Linux, I'd go for VMWare.

VMWare Workstation beats the HELL outta virtualpc. I concur with Winni.

VirtualBox is free & pretty good. I use it.

AFAIK, you are allowed to virtualize other OSes under any version of Vista. What the non-Ultimate Vista licenses forbids is to run Vista itself on a virtual machine.

VMWare, works great, especially if the OS you're emulating is compatible with the VMware tools (some linux flavors are, but not all)

If the VMware tools are supported then the mouse and video are much more responsive, plug you can copy files in/out of the virtual machine simply by dragging/dropping them.

Yeah. DSL or WMWare.

Is it possible to emulate XP under linux with VMware? I would prefer it this way round as i hardly use windows much anymore. If you are emulating the XP do you still have full compatibility with DX etc?

Yes you can run XP under Linux with VMWare. With the help of Google, you can even run an installed XP from another partition (which I found enormously handy).

Unfortunately, I've thus far only been able to test it with a dog-vomit of a system at work so it was soul-destroyingly slow... but the word on the street is it's speedy enough on a half-decent system to be very useful.

Yeah, I was trying to install VirtualBox on Vista, but the dumb strict installation packages that Vista had won't even accept that as a valid MSI file. I was even trying to install the most updated MSI redistro packages, and it failed to do so. Vista just seems to protect itself from being an emulation tool for other OSes, even tho Ultimate gives you the right to do so. I'd better hope that VMWare Workstation can come through, but I don't feel like dumping $200 on WS, and VM Server is only for server PCs, not for regular old Vista-based PCs or XP-based PCs at all...

I have Linux ruuning under VMWare / XP, I can confirm VirtualPC is problematic at running Linux. I haven't tried the XP under Linux/VMWare option however.

I run Microsoft VirtualPC with no problems on my XP box.

I have a Debian install with no XWindows and I have a Ubuntu install. It works flawlessly as far as I can tell. The Ubuntu install does have a little trick you have to do to get it to install, I don't remember what it was, but it is very easy to find on the Net.

You can run XP under VMWare on Linux just as well as you can run XP under VMWare on XP. I think VMWares 3d acceleration features exist for Linux as well (said features only work with Win2000 and XP guest OSs however).

Have a look at this, could be a better solution in the long run.

[link]http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/[/link]

Heh, well, I'm running Fedora Core 6 on XP/VirtualBox right now, unfortunately, when it boots, it won't go into GNOME, like I expected it to. Anaconda was just a pain in the butt installer, don't ask me why. I mean, installation was easy, but I don't know if I was given an option as far as which type of desktop to install on here.