Emulate Linux on Windows xp home?

[Garibaldi]

Is there a way to emulate linux on xp? I currently have pear pc to emulate mac os x, and I would like to try linux too. I really like the stablitity of unix-based operating systems like osx, and if I'm not mistaken linux is too. I did a google on this and came up with this page: http://www.freeoszoo.org/download.php
What is your opinion on qemu? I also looked on www.colinux.org, is that a good emulator too? Are there any other ones that might be better. I know that there are many different versions of linux with it being open source. Could you tell me the main differences and which one would be best for me (a newbie). My system specs are:
Win Xp Home SP1 HP Pavillion AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.19 GB 448 RAM 160 GB HDD. Could you also recommend some links to places to get started in linux? Also some links to freeware video editing, photo editing, ect, programs in linux? Also, is there any site where the linux os has really been compressed so it will download faster? The first link: http://www.freeoszoo.org/download.php shows each os as being about 1 gb. One last thing. That freeoszoo site lists a bunch of of ther os downloads. Could you post anything you know about those, especially about amiga? Thanks alot. Garibaldi

[mastersmurfie]

if you can find it for download, try KNOPPIX

no need (at first) to set up a separate boot partition...as it will boot the entire operating system from a CD...

I have been experimenting with this lately to see if Linux is something I might want to use...

mastersmurfie

[Faustus]

Virtual PC?

[mujahid7ia]

I found these helpful: http://www.linux.org/lessons/index.html

Slax and knoppix are two boot off cd distros, probably th best for trying out Linux.

[macleod]

Will it work with all version of linux (linux, red hat, BSD)?

[Garibaldi]

I downloaded & burned myself a copy of knoppix 3.6, its great! Now I want to make it bootable from the hdd. Here's the guide I have been following: www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/PoorMansInstall . My situation is as follows: I have a hp pavilion with AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 512 RAM and a 160 GB hdd divided into 2 partitions. The first partition (C) is 144 GB and contains all the windows programs and is the main partition. The other parition is the "HP Recovery" partition which contains the hp recovery info, bascially a copy of the OEM version of windows that I have. This isn't absolutely necessary because I have the windows disks from hp that are the same thing, but it would be nice to keep. This partition has 786 megs free. I did the tohd=/dev/hda1 cheatcode and created a persistent home on the same partition. It couldn't boot from the partition. I tried only "knoppix fromhd=/dev/hda1" without home=scan, but it still couldn't find the fs. How much space is needed for the fs? Like I said, I only have 786 mb. Also, what should I do to accoplish this (which of these do I need to do to do this: persistent home, poormans install, save config file): I want to be able to download and install new programs into linux and be able to keep my settings from time to time. Also, I would like it to have good performance. I am guessing that I will need to do all three of those to get that. Finally, how would you recommend me making a persistent home folder, since I can't use the same partition as I'm booting from? I do have a flashdrive that's only 32 megs, not very good. I have it in when I boot, and knoppix shows it on the desktop as sda1, sda2, sda3, and sda4. When I try to click on these it gives me an error on "cannot mount, no fs specified." Maybe I need to format it, could you give me some instructions on how to do that? Thanks.

[gitreel]

Damn small Linux runs from the cd as well.

You could try it.