I have a (Virtually) new computer!

[BigV]

I say Virtually, because this post is coming to you live from a virtual machine, a completely RAM based pc living inside my original Dell laptop. The kicker for me is that on this machine I have installed Koppix 4.0, a flavor of Linux. I'm *stoked*!!

To be able to have a live Linux box to practice on will be of great usefulness. In fact, I can make more than one of these "boxes" on this same machine, and practice getting them to talk to one another. Make a change on Thing One and see the effect on Thing Two. Very very cool.

These virtual machines are possible on my Windows XP system thanks to a package called Virtual PC 2004 from Microsoft. I got the software as a gratuity for participating in some user focus group or another, and to thank the participants, we were all given a letter good for one item from the company store. I chose Virtual PC after working on the program in a class some time ago. It is very neat, having all these machines a click away. They're very robust, very realistic. I can't tell the difference, minus the physical box, of course. As this post demonstrates, they can reach the outside world as well.

The only thing I haven't done yet is switch off or suspend this "machine" and come back to it and make it live again. To be honest, there are two places I need to learn to shut 'er down. I need to learn how to shutdown the Koppix VPC, and I need to learn how to manipulate the VPC console. I remember in class that it is possible, since the whole affair is in RAM anyhow, to write a machine's state at a given moment to disk, shut down VPC, shut down the host machine and power it off, then return and reverse the steps and the VPC machine is none the wiser. It was cool in class, I'm looking forward to trying it here.

So, I'll leave this post as my new highmark. I'll test some stuff and come back and see the changes. I'll also be seeking any helpful input on Linux or VPC. Are there any Knoppix users out there? VPC? *chirp chirp* Tennis, anyone? Fine then. I have a whole network of computers right here on my screen. I'm gonna play!