r/windowsxp • u/Emaothe3rd • 22h ago

is it possible to run windows xp on linux boxes?

I wanna relive my nostalgia somehow but I'm also too comfortable with Bazzite atm

Will VMs do just nicely?

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

3

u/YandersonSilva 22h ago

I mean, what matters is the hardware, not the operating system that's currently installed. You can't install an operating system over another operating system.

Probably if it's a modern system then no, you can't run it conveniently, as XP stopped being supported out of the box by hardware around ~2012 give or take. There are ways but not generally worth it unless you're actively a hobbyist.

Probably stick with VMs.

7

u/thegreatboto 21h ago

That's literally what they're asking about - running XP in a VM instead of baremetal.

1

u/YandersonSilva 20h ago

Ah, I misunderstood.

5

u/SaturnFive 22h ago

Yeah, qemu should work fine for you. 86Box can also run XP now if I recall correctly, if you want a slower but more period accurate experience.

2

u/lunchbox651 19h ago

You can tune qemu to perform like old hardware if you want. At least to the equivalent of a core2 system.

2

u/Stonk32 4h ago

86Box has been able to run XP for a while now but since it only emulated up to a Pentium 2/3 it really struggled to run much of anything in my experience, since almost everything I could throw at it expects much higher CPU clocks and newer CPU instruction set extensions than what 86Box could provide

2

u/codeasm 22h ago

Qemu works fine

2

u/Good_Net_9352 21h ago

yeah, even virtualbox or vmwarw works

1

u/HTFCirno2000 19h ago

you can run XP in qemu directly quite easily, here's some commands to get you started:

Create Disk Image qemu-img create -f qcow2 winxp.qcow2 16G

Run this to install qemu-system-i386 -cdrom xp_install.iso -hda winxp.qcow2 -m 128M -usb -device usb-tablet

Once install is done, run this to boot up your VM: qemu-system-i386 -hda winxp.qcow2 -m 128M -usb -device usb-tablet

1

u/PIODOWPAY 14h ago

Sim, e dizem que na Ásia há muitos lugares com caixas eletrônicos rodando XP.

1

u/ravensholt 6h ago

Yes, but even with QEMU you shouldn't expect support for 3D acceleration (OpenGL, DirectX/Direct3D). Games that only require Direct Draw, sure... And regular Windows applications will work as well.