FOR~GO
(For Geeks Only)
By Joe Callison
9 May 2018
A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system in software. It provides the ability to test or try out various operating systems on your current computer, often at no cost for non-commercial use. It was even provided by Microsoft as an optional Windows feature that could be enabled in Windows 7 Professional to run Windows XP in a virtual machine. For those who still like to tinker with old DOS programs or games, free emulators such as DOSBox are available.
I regularly use two virtual machines. Android Studio is available as a free download for Windows, macOS, or Linux and includes an emulator for various included Android versions and Android devices to choose from. I can quickly load Android Nougat on a Nexus 10 tablet as an emulation for example and provide remote assistance to someone with that combination. I followed instructions from an outdated article on pc-tablet.com based on an older version of Android Studio which was a little tricky because of the changes in the menus. If you try it and run into problems, let me know: https://pc-tablet.com/download-run-android-nougat-windows-pc/
The other virtual machine I regularly use is the free VMWare Workstation Player (available for Windows and Linux) which I use to run macOS High Sierra and the previous version Sierra on, though it can also be used to emulate over 200 other operating systems that you can get an installation image for. I first used VMWare to run macOS El Capitan because of an article I found on Techsviewer with step by step instructions. The article has since been improved and updated for High Sierra and is much easier to follow. It has links to shared files from the author’s Google Drive that for best results you should choose to add to your own Google Drive after the link opens and then download from there. Also downloading the 6-part High Sierra file is more reliable than trying to download the large single file, which kept failing for me: https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-high-sierra-vmware-windows/
