Windows within Kubuntu with qemu

The major hassle of doing web development on Kubuntu (or any non Windows system) is the inevitable hassles with the browser which still has the majority of users (IE6). Options to deal with this include:

• Dual booting with Windows
• Using services such as browsershot and browsercam
• Multiple PCs in a network with different OS
• Let IE users be dammed

All these options have disadvantages in terms of cost and/or time. Having tried most of them, I decided now was the time to try another option – virtualisation or running an OS inside another.
In this case I have started to run Win XP with Kubuntu. Again their are a couple of options, but I went with qemu. There are a number of good resources for this on the net including:

• How to run Windows XP under Ubuntu Dapper
• Windows XP under qemu with Ubuntu Breezy
• Installing Windows XP under Debian with QEMU

Here are the list of instructions I used for Win XP on Kubuntu Fiesty Fawn.
em1:~$ mkdir virtual_os
em1:~$ cd virtual_os
em1:~/virtual_os$ qemu-img create winxp.img 3500M[Suggested size seems to be at least 3 Gig.]
em1:~/virtual_os$ qemu -boot d -hda winxp.img -cdrom /dev/hdc -m 256 -localtime[The /dev/hdc will be specific to your setup. /dev/cdrom did not work for me. This will start the install from CDROM, and expect the process to take time]
em1:~/virtual_os$ qemu -boot c -hda winxp.img -m 256 -localtime[Once installed this is my command to run the guest OS. The number after -m is the amount of memory to allow the guest OS. If you have plenty give it more.]
And that was it. Internet connection was working straight off. Things are a little slower but using only IE it was workable. I just need to get used to Ctrl-Alt to break out of the guest OS back to my native desktop.

Things still to do:

1. Have the guest OS interact with the host
2. Try Win 98 as it should be less system intensive.
3. Have Win XP with IE7 and 98 with IE6.