Being a tad bored, I decided to install Virtual Box. It was extremely easy to set up a virtual machine. Soon enough, I was trying to installed every OS I could think of. Windows XP installed extremely easily, as did Ubuntu 8.04. I also tried almost all of the flavors of BSD, but eventually crapped out; I couldn't get many of them to work. It was quite frustrating. I found this, which could explain why I was having so much trouble.

I tried to go over a few possible reasons in my mind as to why someone would want to install an OS on a virtual machine rather than an actual real-life machine. I came up with a few reasons:

1. Lack of a Machine - This goes without saying, but I'll write it anyway: a person might not have a spare machine collecting dust or even a spare drive.
2. Needed at the Workplace - If your manager or supervisor or whatever would spontaneously combust if you didn't use Microsoft Word or Outlook Express or whatever silly program that a company may rely on, you don't have to install a crappy OS to run that crappy software.
3. Testing Purposes - If you wanted to try out that new release of Fedora but didn't want to mess around with your partitions or risk data loss.
4. Troubleshooting a Family Member's Problems - If your Great Aunt Tia just can't seem to open up Internet Explorer or your little cousin has just installed Ubuntu, you don't have to say "Sorry, I don't run your operating system."

These are the main ones that I could come up with. If you haven't tried out a virtual machine yet, give it a go.

Labels: cross platform, OS, virtual box, virtual machine