Lazycoder

Using Virtual PC or QEMU for testing

I’ll continue on with my adventures in Ruby later today I hope. I just wanted to post this little tip.

I have to support many different types of browsers since many of my users are in an academic environment. Some may be on Macs, some on Unix workstations, most on Windows but different versions of Windows. I can’t set up a ton of different machines to test all the configurations so I set up virtual machines in Virtual PC or QEMUX (if I’m using my iBook). The nice thing is that none of my Linux test machines take up any hard drive space. I just use a live CD distro, put it in the CD-ROM and turn on a default machine. I usually use Knoppix or DamnSmallLinux for Linux browser testing.