VMWare equivalent

I have been using VirtualBox for a while - http://www.virtualbox.org/ - and it works a treat

Everyone seems to be suggesting VirtualBox but, in my opinion, you can't beat VMWare at the virtualization game.

I would get a copy of VMWare Player (it's free for non-commercial use and you'd be hard pressed to find one cheaper than that), then use this web site here to create yourself a virtual machine to whatever specification you need.

I run heaps of images under XP (and one XP image under Debian) and it really is easy to set up. Early editions of the Linux VMWare required you to re-configure the software whenever the kernel changed but this is now an automatic process.

Free emulator for Linux:

QEmu and KVM

http://www.qemu.org/

Best I have used.