Vieraskäyttöjärjestelmiä

Vieraskäyttöjärjestelmiä, known in English as guest operating systems, are installed within a virtual machine environment. A virtual machine is a software-based emulation of a physical computer, allowing multiple operating systems to run on a single piece of hardware. The guest operating system is the one that operates inside this virtualized environment, while the host operating system is the one running directly on the physical hardware.

The primary purpose of guest operating systems is to provide isolation and flexibility. They allow users to run different operating systems simultaneously for testing, development, or to access software that is only compatible with a specific OS. For instance, a developer might use a guest operating system to test their application on Windows while their primary host OS is macOS or Linux.

Common virtualization software that facilitates the use of guest operating systems includes VMware, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V. These platforms manage the resources allocated to the virtual machine, such as CPU, memory, and storage, and present them to the guest OS as if it were running on dedicated hardware. The guest OS interacts with these virtualized resources through special drivers, often referred to as guest additions or integration services, which improve performance and enable features like shared clipboards and seamless mouse integration.

Guest operating systems can range from desktop environments like Windows and macOS to server operating systems like various Linux distributions. Their use is prevalent in cloud computing, where virtual machines are the fundamental unit of deployment, and in enterprise IT for server consolidation and disaster recovery.