Guestkäyttöjärjestelmä

Guestkäyttöjärjestelmä, known in English as a guest operating system, refers to the operating system running within a virtual machine. A virtual machine is a software-based emulation of a physical computer, allowing multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single host hardware. The guest operating system is installed and operates as if it were on its own dedicated hardware, unaware that it is actually a virtualized environment.

The host operating system, conversely, is the primary operating system that runs directly on the physical hardware. It manages the host machine's resources and hosts the hypervisor, which is the software layer responsible for creating and managing virtual machines. The hypervisor allocates resources such as CPU, memory, and storage from the host to each guest operating system.

Guest operating systems can be any type of operating system, including Windows, Linux, macOS, or even older or specialized systems. This allows users to test new software, run applications that are incompatible with their host OS, or isolate potentially insecure applications. It also facilitates development and testing across different platforms. The performance of a guest operating system is dependent on the resources allocated to it by the hypervisor and the capabilities of the underlying host hardware.