Member-only story
Ever wanted to try a Linux operating system to see what it’s like but can’t or don’t want to spend time or data downloading and setting up a virtual machine. Maybe you aren’t sure how to use a virtual machine to test something like that.
Checkout distrotest.net, a service that allows you to start up and run a virtual machine of any of some 600+ linux distros.
The service is free but doesn’t perform very well. Certainly not like the experience you would get by running a distro bare metal or in your own virtual machine. Still, it allows you to get an idea of what that distro looks like and what software it comes with by default without having to download or setup a thing.
You don’t even need an account. Simply find the distro you want to try from the list, hit the start button and wait for it to start up.
Behind the scenes the website uses QEMU and VNC to run the machine and connect you to it’s output.
So, if you’ve been considering seeing what a Linux distro is like but don’t have the ability to download or run it locally, you can try lots of different distros using this website.
Just remember that performance is not great and that’s down to the free service and it’s limited bandwidth, etc. It doesn’t indicate how the software will perform when installed on a computer or run using virtual machine software on a local computer.
