Virtualization is a huge buzzword heard in technical discussions and social news networks, and has recently become a hot topic in the hosting industry. But oftentimes there are many uses of virtualization which go overlooked. Additionally, virtualization does not have to automatically inspire thoughts of expensive arrays of disks and huge banks of RAM and processors. Most modern desktop PCs can be used for some degree of virtualization for personal uses. I would like to introduce you to some of the less thought of uses of virtualization.
1. Carry a personal operating system on a thumb drive
One use of virtualization that I have used extensively in the past is for a personal OS that you can carry with you and use anywhere there’s an available USB port. There is a Linux operating system called Damn Small Linux, or DSL for short, which has a specific version for running in a virtualized environment from a thumb drive. It uses QEMU, a lightweight basic open-source virtualization project, for its virtualization platform. Once you copy the folders to the thumb drive, you simply double click an icon, and it essentially boots up into a fully functional Linux desktop operating system completely isolated from the host operating system! So the next time you’re at your friends house and don’t feel like checking your email on his questionably safe computer, you can feel safe in logging into Gmail from your thumb drive.
