I have to admit that I really like Virtual PC
on Windows XP. I still use XP as my primary laptop/desktop
operating system. Virtual PC extends what I can do tremendously
… I now carry a SCO UnixWare machine with also … virtually.
And I am experimenting with a variety of other kernels and operating
systems virtually. The other day I saw a reference to a new release of Darwin v7.0.1
… and I thought about checking it out. I’ve downloaded the ISO
… booted and installed it … I was able to get X configured
and working with the basic ‘twm’ window manager. I have now been
working on getting the LAN driver working … the DEC Tulip driver on
the CD was for Power PC … I’m now close with the OpenDarwin Tulip driver … got it to make with some assistance … it’s not quite installed.

What’s fun is that I am now downloading and carrying around numerous
ISO images of various operating systems … and booting them at
different times to experiment and learn. It’s like carrying
around a bunch of PCs … all within my laptop. Also, with the
“Undo Disks” I am able to boot, experiment and see how far I can get
… if I can’t get things working, I just close the Virtual PC and
discard the disk changes … rolling me back to my last “known-good”
point.

I just saw a new build of ReactOS
… I was going to take another look at it tomorrow … the last
version would start to install, but failed to partition the hard
disk. I’m also going to continue to work on Darwin also … both
of these are interesting efforts!  Both of these also appear to be
free of the current issues surrounding the Linux kernel …

Virtual PC rules!