WinXP on anotther partition running as guest OS: is it possible (for free)?

[Phil Meyer]

Andre Costa wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have here Fedora 8 and WinXP on the same machine. I use XP mostly
> for gaming, but every once in a while I have to edit some Word docs
> sent by clients on MS Word. ... As much as I wish, OpenOffice isn't
> just there yet, sometimes it messes with the docs, I already tried
> this and received complaints about format changes. It sucks, and
> eventually there will be 100% compatibility, but there's still some
> ground to cover.
>
> According to VMWare Workstation FAQ I could run my installed XP as a
> guest system, but I was wondering if there was no free alternative,
> since it costs USD 189,00 and I will only need it every once in a
> while.
>
> Anyone solved a similar problem? Any advice on what to use and what to
> avoid? Any pitfalls?
>
> Thks,
>
> Andre
>
>   

qemu and qemu-kvm are alternatives.  They perform better (IMO) then the 
commercial offerings, especially if you have a kvm compatible CPU.

$ qemu hda /dev/sda1 cdrom /dev/cdrom -net nic -net user -soundhw all 
-mem 512

Assuming Windoze to be on partition /dev/sda1, and that you have given 
yourself permission to use that partition, and the /dev/kvm device.

Good luck!