What would you say could serve as a decent ‘winxp’ empulator?
empulator = emulator
Well, a number of the recent spins of Linux support virtualization, which means you can have Windows XP as a “guest” OS for those few apps that won’t run under anything else. This assumes your hardware has the virtualization support necessary — I recently bought a used Dell desktop for $60 that has this support.
After your install of whatever Linux version, install VirtualBox. Then you can run any other OS at the same time inside of Linux (works the other way too)..
I have Win7 on my left screen and Linux on my right screen, both running on the same PC (XP would be just as easy to run in VB, but I would recommend making sure there is not net connection for XP, although, since it IS in a VB, your main hardware and software is protected (in a sandbox)).