On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 09:02:07 -0400 vendor@billoblog.com wrote:
Do you know if those OEM $39 distros will actually work in Virtualbox?
I bought the cheapest OEM Windows 7 I could find from a legitimate source (I don't remember how much I paid, I think it was 50 or 60 bucks). I was able to install it fine using virt-manager. This was before Windows 10, so when Windows 10 came around, I upgraded the VM, which took forever, but worked, so I now have a Windows 10 virtual machine.
I use a read only qcow2 base image with the running system in a read/write qcow2, so if I ever have any problems, I can just revert back to the base.
Whenever I happen to feel like killing time, I can boot directly in the base, apply Windows updates, and make a new more up-to-date base image.
I use the redhat virtual disk and network drivers and such to get good performance and cut & paste support, etc (I swear they move the "official" location to find them every two or three weeks though, so don't ask me where they are now :-).
The only thing that doesn't work with qemu is 3D graphics (there are various rumors of projects to provide it, but I don't think anything real exists yet). This isn't usually a problem, but it did prevent me from running the software for my 3D scanner in a virtual machine because it insisted on open GL.