What are people doing for operating systems and what do folks recommend? I am guessing I want the smallest memory footprint that runs well. Is that XP? What about Windows 2000?
XP is your safest and easiest bet IMO. No authorization and still supported (unlike 2k). Enter Vista and 2k7 and you have all of the OS registration stuff to contend with not to mention HUGE space and memory requirements that simply aren't necessary for scripting machines. I use 4gig drive files with 256Megs RAM and Windows XP and install nothing but UO and whatever UO-specific tools I need. No Viruscan, no swap file, just let 'er rip.
Do I need to buy a license for each VM? Seems like I remember Windows 2000 not checking online to match keys, but maybe it was before even 2000.
If you are being honest and actually purchasing your licenses then yes, consider each copy of a guest OS that you run virtually as an entirely new machine thus requiring a seperate OS client license. No, there are no checks and balances, it's an honor system thing until you get to Vista/2k7 (see above). The CD-Keys mean absolutely nothing, you can build 1,000,000,000,000,000 machines with the same CD key.
I can probably justify the 190 for Workstation if its the best option. Certainly was easy to set up. Sounds like Maddog likes VirtualBox better and if that's free and works as well its hard to justify paying for the same thing...
You don't need to pay for Microsoft Virtual PC and it works great. Furthermore, you have it set up already. Why change it? I say keep using what you've already done.
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