DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: QEMU Knoppix?

Ever since I started playing with QEMU I've wondered about the possibility of running it from a live cd to boot a non-live OS. Example: use DSL (with SDL support) to launch right into qemu and with qemu run Win2k (or any disk image that will fit on the remaining portion of the CD). I haven't had the wits to load QEMU in the linux environment so I'm not 100% but I believe the linux version can access disk drives directly so you can run windows repair tools/virus scanners on an actual drive. Although Bart's PE and Windows PE already exist, neither of these provide a full OS to play with; this way you can make use of your old OSes you already have licensed. Finally, I realize that windows throws a fit if it boots from a read only device so you could run QEMU with a differential file pointed to dev/nul. Does anyone know if this has been attempted or how I could get started on this? (I have limited experience with linux: I haven't compiled my own kernel much less my own live cd).

Using a stripped down windows install (created using nLite) I had no problem loading Win2k on a 500mb disk image and even had 50+ to spare. Given that DSL takes only 50 megs and qemu ~1mb, the cd still has room for at least 145+megs (and 50mb+ on the image). With the DSL distro properly configured with SDL support running most any OS will run fine. Don't mean to beat a dead horse, but seriously the options aren't limited to QEMU; PearPC could allow Mac OS X to run Live (or Os8 with Basilisk II). With the various open source emulators one can now run virtually any operating system from a live self contained cd or DVD.

On a side note, VPN works beautifully from inside of QEMU. With this knowledge, a crafty IT dept can easily put together a live CD that is loaded with all appropriate security patches and policies. The beauty of this is that the user would only require one cd that can autoload from windows (using the win32 port of QEMU) or boot straight from CD (using DSL to load qemu).

I'll apologize in advanced for the length in which I mention the idea of emulation as opposed to DSL, but it seems as though that DSL is the key that would make so much of this possible

Rob

seriously: why doesn't miscrosoft take care of this? why should the open source community work for better support of winblows? I mean..one thing is to improve linux (any linux distro) in order to make it work well together with the mainstream OS, another thing is to help the mainstream OS to work better thanks to linux.

Quote (davide @ Mar. 14 2005,08:04)

seriously: why doesn't miscrosoft take care of this? why should the open source community work for better support of winblows? I mean..one thing is to improve linux (any linux distro) in order to make it work well together with the mainstream OS, another thing is to help the mainstream OS to work better thanks to linux.

Two words bud

Proprietary Software = no GPL = SUX

Without the GPL, Linux wouldnt be anywhere it is today!

Brian
AwPhuch

i wouldn't say that
there is quality proprietary software out there
it's just that you can't check it out

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