[Tfug] Virtual Windows98 under Linux

[Jim March]

>>Jim,

The problem with Windows, as I see it, besides the mal-ware problem, is that
you get caught in a constant cycle of hardware and software upgrades. We use
an old copy of Quickbooks, which is perfectly adequate for our business and
which ran perfectly well on Windows 98, but has problems on XP and will cost
$200 to upgrade. I use an old machine (AMD 750) which works just fine with
Ubuntu. Will Virtualbox work with Windows 98 or ME? This really sounds like
a way for me to go. Thanks for the idea, Malcolm<<

Malcolm, it'll work, but with limitations.

First thing, you're going to need at least 512megs RAM total and anything
more would be better: 768 or a gig or more.

Second: Win98 and ME will run as virtual machine tasks under Virtualbox, BUT
there's no software written for them to help them use the host machine's
hardware to full effect.  Which means you are limited to a 640x480 video
display on the guest operating system, you have no USB support, and you have
no networking possible between the host Linux operating system and the guest
Windows box.

One possible solution is to use Windows 2000 as the guest, if your
applications will run on it.

Here's how the setup works under Virtualbox and I suspect most other VM
manager apps:

1) Build the virtual machine: tell the virtual machine manager how much RAM
and disk space to provide, tell it the boot order, where to get it's
networking if any, etc.  It's like building a hardware PC, but with menu
buttons :).

2) Load the guest operating system into the new VM.  This can be via a
Windows boot CD image on an .ISO file (common if you downloaded Windows via
ThePirateBay or similar <grin>) or from an actual Windows boot/install CD.

3) Once the guest Windows OS is up and running, load the "guest additions",
a Windows driver package that tells it how to use the host hardware
resources via the host OS.  (However, I *think* Virtualbox provides it's
networking in a standard enough fashion that Win98 can get to it without the
guest additions package?)

The VirtualBox guest additions package runs on Win2k on up last I checked.
Download the manual to be sure that's still the case with the latest version
(1.5.6 as of last week).

Virtualbox is the best VM manager app I've run into, by far.  There are two
flavors: the fully open source edition (OSE) lacks USB port sharing and
inter-networking between host and guest.  You can get the "full tilt"
version that has these features free through the VirtualBox website.  The
OSE version is found in most major distro's package manager.

I run the "full tilt" version and always share /home/"username" and /media
from the Ubuntu directories with the guest OS.  In Ubuntu, any USB or
Firewire disk connected gets a directory added underneath /media so if I
have my guest OS linking "M:" to /media I can always get to attached disks
regardless of their file system.  In other words, even if the USB disk is
formatted EXT3 or ReiserFS or something, my Windows guest can get to it via
"M:", while my Linux home directory is under "J:" or whatever.

Even if you turn on guest OS Internet services via NAT routing in
Virtualbox, the host Linux OS will still protect Windows from malware that
comes crawling up the pipe to get at you.  The only way you can infect the
Windows guest is to visit a rabid website that nails you or bring in the
funk via EMail - but you should be doing all your EMail and most of your
web-stuff in Linux anyways, hitting the Internet in the Windows guest only
when downloading well-trusted updates or something.  As long as you do all
this, you need no Windows-side anti-malware programs of any sort - Linux and
Virtualbox together are your firewall.

Jim
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