Systems and methods for providing seamless software compatibility using virtual machines

摘要

Certain embodiments of the present invention are directed to a system for and method of providing seamless software compatibility by using virtual machines to provide an improved, more seamless method of user interaction with one or more virtual machines (VMs) that are resident on a host computer system. Several embodiments of the present invention provide a means in the host environment for directly invoking one or more guest operating system (OS) applications or files and displaying them in the host environment, rather than in a separate VM window. Furthermore, each embodiment of the present invention allows the possibility of multiple applications on multiple OSs (i.e., legacy or modern OSs), respectively, to run simultaneously and with the appearance of running seamlessly in the host environment.

主权项

1. A computerized method, comprising:
executing an instance of a first version of an operating system as a host operating system on a computing device; displaying on a display device associated with the computing device, in an execution environment of the host operating system, a proxy icon for an application preconfigured to optimally execute on a second version of an operating system; receiving, by the host operating system, a selection of the proxy icon; determining, in response to receiving the selection of the proxy icon, that the application is configured to execute on the second version of the operating system; sending a signal indicative of the selection of the proxy icon to a virtual machine monitor so that the virtual machine monitor causes, in response to receiving the selection of the proxy icon: execution on the computing device of a virtual machine, wherein the virtual machine includes virtualized hardware; execution of an instance of the second version of the operating system in the virtual machine as a guest operating system; execution of the application on the guest operating system executing in the virtual machine; and display of a user interface for the application executing on the guest operating system.