virtual machines

[Monty Lilburn]

Hello All,

Recently I have been toying with the idea of running a virtual machine on 
my Linux/Debian box.  Ultimately my aim would be to have Windows XP 
running as a guest O/S on my Debian host machine.  I would hope to be able 
to run Jaws  on the Windows XP guest O/S too.

As a trial, I have been attempting to use Qemu.  Before attempting to 
get the Windows XP going, I thought I would try something relatively 
simple like loading a Speakup/softsynth equipped Knoppix ISO.  Although 
the this kind of works in that I do get to a Knoppix prompt, I normally 
don't seam to have any joy with the speakup part.  It did work once but I 
don't know what qemu switches/configuration I used that time and it is 
proving  to be difficult to duplicate.

Since this is turning out to be somewhat futile, I wonder if anyone has 
any  better suggestions on how to successfully get a VM going?  I've heard 
that  VMPlayer works quite well but I understand that I would need to have 
X-windows installed on my Debian box.  In order to do this (unless I am 
wrong) I would need to first install Gnoppornicus or Orca to make the 
X-windows/Gnome  environment accessible to even install the VMPlayer. 
Maybe there is a way around this?  The last time I attempted to install 
Gnoppornicus on my Debian box it failed miserably in that the packages 
didn't go in smoothly and I think all that spoke was the initial welcome 
message.  I digress!!!

So if anyone has any thoughts they would be much appreciated.

Best regards,
   Monty