qemu

A sexy emulator !

Qemu: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
Qemu for Windows: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/

This program can emulate x86, MIPS, Sparc, ARM, PPC etc. I tried both the windows and linux x86 versions.. on the windows version, I tried loading a linux livecd.. And on the linux version, I tried out Windows XP

The project is still under development though.. Some bugs here and there are evident. I didn't like the networking support for the thingy. And I hate having to type out configs.. vmware virtualPC etc are gorgeous for their GUI alone, I'd say. Yet, neither vmware nor virtualPC support that entire gamut of processors, and best of all, this thing is FREE !

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Related links I found to be useful..

The OpenVPN tool which can be used for host-only networking / bridged networking on a windows host: http://openvpn.net/
- a how to for the same: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/TapWin32-en.html

VDE - Virtual Distributed Ethernet, to use for host-only / bridged networking on linux hosts: http://vde.sourceforge.net/
- how to: http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE_Basic_Networking

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