Re:Hey Joe - what about this, did you test this ou
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 29, 2006 03:09 AM
I've not used the fancy tools for factual metrics measurement but I've been mucking with VMware server for a few months now.
1. running winXP host with Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian guest OS. Mandriva and Ubuntu ran clean however Debian continues to give me some grief. VMware has custom simulated hardware for a number of Linux distributions but presently offers a generic hardware simulation for "other" flavours. I'm sure better support will come with further development. Someone with more intimate Linux experience could probably get it going though; I'm good but there are those better than I.
2. I'm still playing with USB support with little success. VMware provides a link between the hardware USB and guest OS USB in the same manner as video, audio, drives and the rest of the hardware so theoretically, there should be no issue since it's just bridging the USB sockets and guestOS. I'm currently testing with win98 for minimul footprint to support some windows only things I need but I'll probably have a winXP virtual box setup again within the week.
3. If it wasn't addressed before, time has not been supported. VMware provides a "sync PC time with guest" function so your hardware bios and virtual bios stay together. So far all my VM guests have had no time issues.
To add some points:
I'm running a winXP/Mandriva dual boot with win32 and Linux versions of VMware. This should equate to the same hardware running the same virtualization deamon on two different host OS.
My joke used to be "even Windows runs better on a mac" when Bootcamp came out but it holds true that "even Windows runs better on Linux".
WinXP guest on a WinXP host (even through local connection) feels like a remote desktop. You get to move the mouse and see the screen but everything is lagged just enough to remind you your not really there. WinXP guest on Linux host still has just a breath of lag but but noticably more responsive.
This is provided simply for fact not the usual Win vs *nix arguments. Windows is an ease of use OS where Linux is a performance OS so of course Linux will make better use of system resources resulting in faster guest OS.
I can also state that virtual machines are very transferable. My initial setup was a fat32 partition to house VMware image files so that either winXP or Linux boot could access them. The only grief I had was VMware questioning the guestOS ID number (think database unique identifier) and updating the simulated floppy drive to point to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/dev/fd0 or a: respective to which hostOS they where openned under. I had a small bit of trouble getting a regular user account to work with VMware only because the user did not have read/write access to the mounted fat32 partition.
I'm now looking to explore other virtualization apps including Xen but so far with VMware, I have no real need to do so. If all goes to plan, I'll be able to drop my winXP boot partition back to just big enough for a few game installs.
Other than that, I only need windows to properly sync my PalmT5/Razr/Outlook through USB and support the ATI tuner chip. I'd happily drop Outlook if I could get phone/palm sync support under linux (no motorola phone tools and kpilot can't track the constant USB port changes with the T5 constantly reconnecting). ATI tuner support will come with X7.1 in Mandriva2007 unless I upgrade my X sooner.
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Re:Hey Joe - what about this, did you test this ou
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 29, 2006 03:09 AM1. running winXP host with Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian guest OS. Mandriva and Ubuntu ran clean however Debian continues to give me some grief. VMware has custom simulated hardware for a number of Linux distributions but presently offers a generic hardware simulation for "other" flavours. I'm sure better support will come with further development. Someone with more intimate Linux experience could probably get it going though; I'm good but there are those better than I.
2. I'm still playing with USB support with little success. VMware provides a link between the hardware USB and guest OS USB in the same manner as video, audio, drives and the rest of the hardware so theoretically, there should be no issue since it's just bridging the USB sockets and guestOS. I'm currently testing with win98 for minimul footprint to support some windows only things I need but I'll probably have a winXP virtual box setup again within the week.
3. If it wasn't addressed before, time has not been supported. VMware provides a "sync PC time with guest" function so your hardware bios and virtual bios stay together. So far all my VM guests have had no time issues.
To add some points:
I'm running a winXP/Mandriva dual boot with win32 and Linux versions of VMware. This should equate to the same hardware running the same virtualization deamon on two different host OS.
My joke used to be "even Windows runs better on a mac" when Bootcamp came out but it holds true that "even Windows runs better on Linux".
WinXP guest on a WinXP host (even through local connection) feels like a remote desktop. You get to move the mouse and see the screen but everything is lagged just enough to remind you your not really there. WinXP guest on Linux host still has just a breath of lag but but noticably more responsive.
This is provided simply for fact not the usual Win vs *nix arguments. Windows is an ease of use OS where Linux is a performance OS so of course Linux will make better use of system resources resulting in faster guest OS.
I can also state that virtual machines are very transferable. My initial setup was a fat32 partition to house VMware image files so that either winXP or Linux boot could access them. The only grief I had was VMware questioning the guestOS ID number (think database unique identifier) and updating the simulated floppy drive to point to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/dev/fd0 or a: respective to which hostOS they where openned under. I had a small bit of trouble getting a regular user account to work with VMware only because the user did not have read/write access to the mounted fat32 partition.
I'm now looking to explore other virtualization apps including Xen but so far with VMware, I have no real need to do so. If all goes to plan, I'll be able to drop my winXP boot partition back to just big enough for a few game installs.
Other than that, I only need windows to properly sync my PalmT5/Razr/Outlook through USB and support the ATI tuner chip. I'd happily drop Outlook if I could get phone/palm sync support under linux (no motorola phone tools and kpilot can't track the constant USB port changes with the T5 constantly reconnecting). ATI tuner support will come with X7.1 in Mandriva2007 unless I upgrade my X sooner.
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