[Qemu-devel] Re: Using Qemu to install Linux in a Windows XP

[Brett Bonfield <pacella@gmail.com>]

> From: Ronald <look@reply.to >
> Subject: [Qemu-devel] Re: Using Qemu to install Linux in a Windows XP
> To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org 
> Message-ID: <pan.2004.11.15.16.34.43.393327@reply.to >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15
> 
> Le Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:40:22 -0500, Brett Bonfield a écrit :
> 
> > On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 22:46:59 +0100, Fabrice Bellard <fabrice@bellard.org >
> > wrote:
> >> Brett Bonfield wrote:
> >>  > [...]
> >> > Also, would you consider making QEMUMenu.bat work with "dd for Win32"
> >> > as well as it works with Zitu's program. dd for Win32 is available
> >> > here: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm 
> >> >
> >> > The advantage it has over mkqemuimage.exe is that it can make any size
> >> > images, at least so far as I can tell. The logic John Newbigin emailed
> >> > goes as follows:
> >>
> >> Then why not fixing mkqemuimage.exe to do that too ?
> >>
> >> Fabrice.
> >
> > I hope I didn't offend anyone and I definitely didn't mean to imply that
> > dd for Win32 was somehow better than mkqemuimage.exe. Honestly, I don't
> > know anything about mkqemuimage--someone on the Mepis forum suggested
> > using dd so I investigated how to do that on Windows. Is there a good
> > reason to use mkqemuimage instead of dd for Win32? I have no idea how to
> > adjust mkqemuimage so that it meets my needs, but if someone else wants to
> > take on that project I suspect I'm one of many people who would be
> > grateful.
> >
> > Brett
> 
> Is there a particular reason to not use qemu-img.exe?
> mkqemuimage is perhaps much simpler to use but have this 2G limit and only
> output raw images.
> 
> Anyway this is a nice tool that have been created for making empty images
> to use with qemu on windows instead of borrowing one from another project.

I think the reason I have so many questions is there's either a lack
of documenation or I haven't been able to find the documentation.

I think my situation is (or will be) the situation in which many
people find themselves:
I have a computer that runs Windows (in my case, XP Pro) and I want to
be able to run Linux on it *while* I'm running Windows. I don't want
to have to reboot to swith from OS to OS, I don't want to partition my
hard drive, I want to be able to save my work and install Linux
software, but I don't want to damage my current Windows XP install.

What do I do?

There are dozens (hundreds?) of Linux distros. I chose SimplyMEPIS
because it's the simplest to install and use, at least in my
experience.

Between Qemu and Cooperative Linux, I like Qemu because it's easier to
install and use.

But now that I''ve made this decision, I still don't know the best way
to proceed. It seems I could use dd for Win32, but those who know Qemu
best seem to think this is a bad idea. I could use mkqemuimage.exe or
qemu-img.exe or Make-a-file.exe, some of them through QemuMenu.bat,
but I don't know which one makes the most sense for my needs and I
can't find documentation on any of them. Plus, I still don't know how
to make sure that when I install Linux I can be sure it's not damaging
my host OS (I realize this is addressed in the FreeOSZoo FAQ, but the
answer doesn't seem to be about disk images that allow program like
apt-get to install software on a virtual image).

If I can get all this straightened out in my head I'd be happy to help
with documentation... I just need to be able to test first.

Brett