I’ve used VM in Windows many times to run Linux and am familiar with the setup and what have you. However, as I’m trying to migrate my PC to Linux as the main OS with Windows XP running virtualised, I’m not so sure which way to go.
So, could you offer some advice please? I have a Quad Q6600 CPU and 3Gb RAM, so hardware-wise, it should be fine. But, I’ve no idea which software to use. I keep looking at Hypervisor in the menu, but haven’t a clue what it is. What about VirtualBox? Is that any good? VMWare?
As I’m still no expert with Linux, something that works out of the box, like VM in Windoze, would be preferable. Any and all advice welcome!
I use VMware Server, VirtualBox, and Xen currently, and will be diving
into Qemu/KvM shortly, but the first two are both very easy to use and
free. Give them a shot.
Good luck.
lealoc wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I’ve used VM in Windows many times to run Linux and am familiar with
> the setup and what have you. However, as I’m trying to migrate my PC to
> Linux as the main OS with Windows XP running virtualised, I’m not so
> sure which way to go.
>
> So, could you offer some advice please? I have a Quad Q6600 CPU and 3Gb
> RAM, so hardware-wise, it should be fine. But, I’ve no idea which
> software to use. I keep looking at Hypervisor in the menu, but haven’t a
> clue what it is. What about VirtualBox? Is that any good? VMWare?
>
> As I’m still no expert with Linux, something that works out of the box,
> like VM in Windoze, would be preferable. Any and all advice welcome!
>
> Cheers,
> Lealoc
>
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
ab@novell.com - Thanks, I think I’ll go with VM as it is a platform I’m familiar with. I didn’t realise server is now free though! Great stuff.
1michael1 - Wine is no good for my purposes. I’ve spent many a frustrating hour trying to get it working properly. I have a number of apps which simply don’t run happily in anything except native Win32. Thanks for the suggestion though
If you need 3D hardware acceleration, you’d better go for VMware, in VirtualBox it’s still in it’s early stages.
Then again, if you don’t need that, I’d recommend VirtualBox. IMHO it’s lighter and the performance is incredible. XP with SP3 boots and runs as quickly as native
I run virtualbox (not OSE for USB support). Runs perfectly fine, indeed in Win XP starts very fast.
It really helps for websites layout testings on various platforms!
I need the USB support because I often print photo’s, printing without borders is not really well supported in Opensuse on my Canon Pixma. But from virtualbox it’s excellent.
Workstation is the money maker(Virtual networks), surely it should be thank you for the free one not I’m p**d off its not free? Bit like thanks for the free beer but I wanted a free pint of whisky.
I use Virtualbox 2.1.4 at work with Vista 64 bits guest (and sometimes also an old Win2K guest). No real problem after it was properly configured (add user to vboxusers group and so on…).
At home, I use VMware player because I need Direct3D support for the kids’ games (Virtualbox offer only OpenGL 3D support and not Direct3D if I have well understood).
I started with a VMserver to create my virtual machines (the console inside the web browser of version 2.x is not as easy to understand than the previous version 1.x I would say). Then I went back to VMplayer to have a much simpler way to use things (good for the kids), then temporarily Workstation (30 days trial) to make changes to the virtual machine config, then back to to Player. Then I learned how to edit the .vmx file to modify the virtual machine and since then I stick to VM player at home.
=> Conclusion: my advice is to use Virtualbox if you do not need direct3D and VMplayer in the other case. In this last case be prepared to do a little googling to learn how to make your config file. There are excellent tutos out there that rank high when you use google.
I forgot to mention that I also use wine at home.
However, it is still not easy to install games in wine though there have been a lot of progress and the wineHQ site is of great help (be prepared to learn about using “winetricks”, changing between native and original for the version of libraries, tweaking the register… Even to use M$ office, you have some additional steps to do.
Finally I also want to say that, though I do have bought all the games that I want to use, I have had to learn what a no-cd or no-dvd patch is, in order to make some of them work in the virtual machine!..
With VMware or VirtualBox you will have native installation but not even near to native 3D-Support.
As stated before, openGL is supported Direct3D is not and even the support is not nearly as fast than running natively under Windows, and for obvious reasons it never really can be in VmWare or VBox.
If you really have a lot of games and some (most) do not run well under wine, the only real solution is dual boot and use the OS the games were written for.
//Edit:
Even to use M$ office, you have some additional steps to do
This also makes not real sense, for games you often don’t have an alternative but for Office you have, so why not use the alternatives instead of MS-Office under wine?
If ypou really want/must use MS-Office, then Windows is the OS for it unless you buy a Mac and use MS-Office for Mac.
You do have Direct3D support in VMware player (or workstation but not server) and it is fast enough for good games dating back from 2006/2007 (which is not prehistory!) even with an integrated chipset ! Furthermore, the most demanding games (in terms of graphics and physics) tend to be violent games and I do not want my kids to play with such games…
Furthermore, I want them to get used to Linux, since they get used to Windows at school.
At work, why use M$ office though I know OO for years (and regularly use it to recover damaged Word files!..). The answer is Math equations which I use a lot. OO Math is simply not convenient for that, even with the dmath plugin! By the way, I also use LaTeX to write papers for scientific journals, but it is still not as easy to use as Powerpoint/Impress to make presentations or even Word (though I know Lyx and use Kile…).
Then why use Linux now after using MacOS for around 10 years and Windows for another 10 years ? Because it is easier to develop scientific code in Linux when you cannot afford an integrated development environment such as Visual Fortran (eclipse/photran is very good but still not as good). + it’s fun (!), even if you always end up spending an awful lot of time to configure it !
Why use a virtual machine ? Because I do not want to reboot every time I change from code development to word processing or when I want to make a drawing with my old version of Canvas (fist time I tried to use inkscape, I could not draw a straight line !).
I go from one to the other one quite often in a day.
Why still trying to also install things in Wine ? Because the virtual machine permanently uses a non-negligible part of my RAM (though I have 12 GB on my last PC) because I do not want to reboot it every time.
(last not least) get rid of the need to buy a Windows licence.
VMware Player and Server are free, they are are primarily Production platforms tuned to run one or only a few GuestVMs on limited hardware.
Workstation is vastly more capable than Player or Server, a good buy particularly if you need to customize GuestVM configurations (eg Test alternative virtualized I/O devices in place of real). Of course, if you were a wizard at changing the GuestVM config by hand, you could probably do practically any customization but most people can’t do that or aren’t willing to deal with errors (time is money).
That’s the SOHO products, there are many more if you want to start talking about the Enterprise products.
Question subsidiaire tu sais me dire si mes disques virtuels faits avec Virtualbox OSE sont directement réutilisables après avoir installé PUEL à la place de OSE ou je dois me retaper toutes les installes de mes Guest avec PUEL???
