WinXP on anotther partition running as guest OS: is it possible (for free)?

[Mike Wright]

Andre Costa wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have here Fedora 8 and WinXP on the same machine. I use XP mostly
> for gaming, but every once in a while I have to edit some Word docs
> sent by clients on MS Word. ... As much as I wish, OpenOffice isn't
> just there yet, sometimes it messes with the docs, I already tried
> this and received complaints about format changes. It sucks, and
> eventually there will be 100% compatibility, but there's still some
> ground to cover.
> 
> According to VMWare Workstation FAQ I could run my installed XP as a
> guest system, but I was wondering if there was no free alternative,
> since it costs USD 189,00 and I will only need it every once in a
> while.
> 
> Anyone solved a similar problem? Any advice on what to use and what to
> avoid? Any pitfalls?

I've had good success with VirtualBox from http://www.virtualbox.org .

Especially neat is the "seamless mode" where the Windows toolbar appears 
at the bottom of your Fedora display.  When you run a Windows program it 
shows up in a Fedora window.

Audio also works well.

Pitfalls:

   During installation it will create a group called vboxusers.  You 
must add yourself to that group, then logout and log back in; otherwise, 
it won't run.  After that you won't need to go through that step.

   Find /dev/net/tun and chgrp it to vboxusers; otherwise, host mode 
networking won't work.

Other than that you should have no problems.

Have fun,
Mike Wright :m)