New Virtual Desktop Platform Bows

Virtual desktop platform runs multiple OSes, including legacies
Parallels Inc. Wednesday released a beta version of its first product, a virtual machine platform that runs multiple operating systems concurrently. Parallels Workstation runs the Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, Mandriva, Debian, and Fedora Core Linux distributions, FreeBSD, and all versions of Windows — even “legacy” systems such as OS/2 and MS-DOS, the company said.

Each “guest” OS (operating system) can be launched and utilized in networked, portable, independent virtual environments, according to the company. Virtual machine properties, computing priorities, and file structures are managed using an “intuitive” control console, the company said. The “host” OS can be various Linux distributions or Windows.