Migration to full-time Linux

My migration to running Linux full-time has come one step closer. I still need a Windows box for the odd thing here and there, and so to date I’ve been running dual boot systems. Yesterday I came across this article detailing how to set up Windows in QEMU.

I followed it and installed Windows onto a hard drive image file. Qemu gave me network access via it’s virtual network adapters that it emulates and I was able to activate Windows and am currently downloading Windows updates.

The neat thing is that once this is all complete I can take a backup copy of the hard drive image (which from what I read will weigh in at about 1.7GB) and use that to roll back to a known good state in minutes, rather than enduring hours for Windows setup, plus more hours (and bandwidth) for Windows update.

Yum yum! :p