[TriLUG] Win7 & virtual machines

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 08:50:28 -0500
"M. R." <13miketele at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I have Win7 and Ubuntu dual booting.
> 
> I would like to have Win7 as a virtual machine within Ubuntu.
> 
> Do I need to buy a separate Win7 (Professional) for each VM I want to 
> have it as a guest?

Others have basically answered the legal part of your question: Read
your EULA, it's complicated. My question is this: If you truly need
*multiple* instances of Win7P, maybe you should either find another way
of doing things, or cheerfully pay the Windows license fee.

One reason a lot of us use Free Software to free ourselves from all
this legal complication and contingent liabilities:

http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

Personally, I have nothing against paying for software: It's all the
stupid legalese I run from. And I run from fear of the software police
showing up at my door. So I move heaven and earth to do everything on
Linux, and those few vestiges of turn-of-the-century programs I still
need, I have a perfectly licensed Win98 machine headless in the corner
(soon to be a VM).

I'm presuming because you're on a Linux list, you're a Linux guy. Why
don't you do everything you can on Linux, and the remainder on *one
instance* of Win7. Windows is built from the ground up to be a money
making legal entity: You can't freely copy it around like you can with
Linux/BSD.

By the way, if you need all these instances to write a tech book, then
your publisher should provide all the necessary legal Win7 instances.
Sams Publishing did this for me when I wrote Samba Unleashed.

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance