Virtual PC 2004 is free! VmWare Server is free! The OS is not.

(tags virtualization, hardware, software, Windows, Linux, free)

Previously it was Virtual Server 2005 R2 that was crashing my computer. Now will that free version of Virtual PC 2004 do the same thing? I hope not! And wow, VMWare Server has made it out of beta. 1.0, yeah.

I'd like to get into optimizing that "base virtual machine image" creation. Luckily Coding Horror in "Creating Smaller Virtual Machines" has already attempted it and has gotten a less than 650 MB Windows XP SP2 install image, and documented it. Very nice, I just have to follow his directions.

I'm more interested in making small Linux virtual machines or testing out Windows command line tools sets like Interix and Cygwin, though.