Re: [Chicken-users] scheme, builds, and virtual appliances

[John Cowan]

Brandon Van Every scripsit:

> I've wondered if it would make sense to ship a game with its own OS to
> consumers, so that I wouldn't have to be enslaved to Windows issues
> or whatever.  But the reality is, I can't see consumers cranking up
> a DVD just to play a game on their PC.

That's not what VMWare is about.  The VMWare Player (which can be
installed on Linux or Windows, and is free as in beer) allows you
to execute a foreign operating system concurrently with the host one.
Thus one can run Windows on Linux or vice versa, or Windows XP on Windows
2000, or FreeBSD on Windows or Linux, etc. etc. etc.

The disk and memory of the guest OS are represented on the host by a set
of files which can be copied from one host to another by CD or DVD or FTP
or whatever.  So instead of porting a Linux program to Windows, one can
provide a stripped down version of Linux including the program as a VMWare
image, and then anybody can run it from Windows using the VMWare Player.
Guests can run in a window of the host or using the full screen.

In principle, you could do this the other way about, distributing Windows
guests, except that most people don't have Windows licenses to distribute
in this fashion, as you need a separate Windows license for every guest
copy of Windows.

-- 
They do not preach                              John Cowan
  that their God will rouse them                address@hidden
    A little before the nuts work loose.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
They do not teach
  that His Pity allows them                         --Rudyard Kipling,
    to drop their job when they damn-well choose.   "The Sons of Martha"