I would prefere having a portable QEMU made that would allow anyone to install the OS of their choosing rather than having a portable OS premade for them. It would be absolutly great if this QEMU used the QVM86 virtualization software (KQEMU is closed source, but QVM86 is GPL) as virtualization seriously helps QEMU. Also, if a GUI for QEMU (I reccomend QEMU manager) were to be made portable along with it that would be even better. You could preload a few QEMU portable OS's as premade, but I think that making a portable QEMU would be best of all. I use QEMU a lot, and would love to be able to take it with me. Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and React OS already are made portable, but I would think it would be nice if someone wanted a portable Ubuntu, they could make one, or they could make a portable SUSE. Or a portable slackware. Or even, if they bought a liscense, a portable windows. Adding in the virtualization part is necessary for larger OS's though as QEMU alone is just far to slow. A portable QEMU alone would be enough for me to purchase a removable hard disk.
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I haven't played with QVM86 and hadn't bothered with QEMU as it was just far too slow to be useful. QVM86 is listed as a pre-alpha stage project... which usually means there's nothing runnable. Does it even run yet?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Yes, it runs, sort of. It is just nearly impossible to find the installer files (I found em) and I think for it to accelerate any faster than 1/4 the processor speed, you need to be logged in as an admin (otherwise QEMU emulates like usuall). QVM is very early in development, but it should work. Without an emulator, how would you make a portable OS? (since it says one will be comming in the future).
By installing one to the USB drive. Contrary to what you might think, USB drives are fully capable of being formatted as bootable disks. It's just that a good number of PC BIOSes can't boot from them.
I know that PC's can be booted from USB (newer ones anyways, and there are other boot disk that can work on older ones telling them to boot from USB). Heck, the Damn Small Linux project sells a "damn small machien" that is a desktop only slighly larger than a CD drive and uses a flash drive instead of a hard drive. But aren't the other portable apps made to be launched inside an OS (usually either Windows or Wine/crossoverDarWine) going with the idea of being able to borrow a computer? A virtual machien would fit this trend as well. It looks like QVM is a long term goal, but portable QEMU wouldn't be hard.
What's to stop you from borrowing time on somebody's computer, rebooting the machine with the USB key in the slot, using your portable OS, then rebooting back into the locally-installed OS? Just because you have to reboot the machine to use it doesn't mean it isn't portable. Portablity in the PortableApps.com sense generally means "don't leave behind anything major or personal on the host computer".
But alot of people can't boot from USB. Hmm, well if there are any legal issues with 'QEMU' we could always go 'RKANGAROO'
----
R McCue
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Haha. Took me a bit to get the joke there, but good one, rmccue.
Edit: We could also call it "QOSTRICH."
Ostriches are cooler than emus anyway.
QCASSAWARY
----
R McCue
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Nah, that's gotta be the ugliest bird ever. Ostriches are still way cooler.
Agreed!
Theres no ostriches in Australia.
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R McCue
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
So what? They're still the coolest flightless birds ever.
QWombat!
(QPlatypus & QWallaby come to mind as well).
"I don't hate cats...as long as they stay on the freeway, where they belong."
- Brad Stine
Thanks for the info on QEMU Manager, i didn't know of this.
CAn you tell me whats not portable on QEMU/QEMU Manager?
Thanks
QEMU Manager is listed on the Portable Freeware Collection Site, and it writes its settings to the application folder. I Haven't had much time to play around with QEMU itself, but from what I can tell, it dosen't write settings to either the profile directory, or the registry. And, since there is a growing number of small portable OS' that are implementing QEMU, I believe that it is quite portable.
Some directory settings have to be specified, maybe qman isnt the best GUI for te job. Any would work though, it is just, command line qemu is more trouble than it's worth (I already need to know dos and unix, why do programs keep wanting me to learn to use a TUI) I guess QEMU by itself is portable. It would be cool just to set it up so you could use QEMU on your home box, set up an image, and carry it with you. QVM may work, but it is a little unstable.
"command line qemu is more trouble"
I used a batch file to select the needed features.
QEUM for windows is very usable with just the batch files and command line. If we had an installer that asked the questions and made the batch files, one wouldn't need QEMU Manager, but it is a nice piece of code.