Primarily, I use Ubuntu linux and have to reboot into windows for VPN sessions I use frequently.  This really got cumbersome to do, and I got all geeky and excited when I discovered Virtual Box from Sun Microsystems.  Turns out this was available to me the whole time.  I just didn’t look hard enough, I guess.

It is, however, kind of weird.  Imagine:  you boot into your primary Ubuntu system, you run Microsoft Vista within Virtual Box, and then connect to another machine running XP from the vista platform.  All without the need to reboot anything.

Then I got to thinking..  the whole passage of internet connections for this setup is really odd:

Firestarter Firewall –> Ubuntu OS –> Virtual Box –> Windows Vista Firewall –> Windows Vista OS –> VPN –> Remote Machine

Of course, you don’t have to be using Linux to utilize this cool virtualization stuff.  You can download a windows version and then run Linux from within Windows.  Or you could run Windows from within a Mac system.

Crazy.

Clear as mud?