If you are looking for a free virtual machine software to run
- Windows inside Mac OS X
- Windows inside Linux
- Linux inside Windows, etc.
you have to checkout VirtualBox.
I have been a long time Windows and Linux user for a long time and following our love for our iPhones, we just bought our first Apple 21.5" iMac
And for a few Windows app we have gotten really used to and for my wife to test some of her web development work in Windows browsers we started looking for a virtual machine solution.
It turns out VirtualBox I have used in Linux to run Windows is available for Mac OS X as well!
VirtualBox Features
- Free, Open Source (GPL) and powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization software
- Runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris machines
- Supports Guest operating systems – Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris, OpenSolaris and OpenBSD.
- Modula Design – Control several interfaces at once
- Virtual machine descriptions in XML – easily portable
- Seamless Guest additions for Windows, Linux and Solaris
- Shared Folders – easy data transfer between guest and host operating systems
The full edition of VirtualBox also has a few more features like Virtual USB Controllers, Remote Desktop Protocol and USB over RDP.
Download VirtualBox
So, if you have been wanting to play with a new operating system in your current machine without re-installing your whole machine, using a virtualization software like VirtualBox is the right way to go.
You could also look at other virtualization software like VMWare, BootCamp, Parallels, etc.
