Post by cjm on Apr 5, 2020 9:40:39 GMT
This differs from the more common virtual machine software such as VM and Virtualbox in that the CPU and BIOS of your pc are directly employed in running additional operating systems simultaneously on your system. This makes for better speed and efficiency.
I have been playing around for many years with the above two systems to run a Windows OS on Linux. Although Linux is satisfactory for most of my simple needs, the Receiver of Revenue has a predilection for Windows and Acrobat. I wonder how much the kickback is. VM and Virtualbox are very slow and have a steep learning curve. Eventually, I installed Windows on a separate drive for I don’t like partitions – perhaps non-problematic now, but in the past also a source of tears. This entails a relatively time-consuming connection of the separate drive each time I run Windows as the Linux solution (grub) also throws up problems with Windows.
I managed to install a KVM on Ubuntu 18.04 using the following article:
How to Install KVM and Manage Virtual Machines in Ubuntu 18.04
I have few comments to ease the way for anyone attempting an installation based on the article.
The first comment concerns the command $ egrep -c ‘(svm|vmx)’ /proc/cpuinfo.
You will note the quote marks are two commas – when directly copied from the article. Terminal, however looks for these 'blahblah'. When typed in Terminal the single quotes appear in this form.
The next issue is to get hold of a Windows system in ISO format. Although this can be copied from the Microsoft site, there are two snags.
The first is that you need a Windows system to download it. Use the specific ISO option – it is no-good downloading the USB stick version. So, you will end up with a Windows ISO OS on the system you used for downloading. Presumably you can copy it to an USB stick and eventually to your Ubuntu system. In my case I burnt it to a disk – this is also what you are prompted for. It fits onto a 4.7 GB disk. Although the system can be downloaded and probably also be installed on the Virtual Machine, ultimately you will need a Windows activation code to run it. These can be bought for relatively low prices on eBay, but I wonder how legal they are as Microsoft requires codes to be purchased from authorised outlets. This just by the way.
It is worth noting that Microsoft provides virtual machines out of the box, but I assume that is for non-windows guests – would not have solved my problem and in any event then they are probably not KVM systems.
Some BIOS systems need not be activated (see article) and are operational for KVM as is.