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On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:04 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote: > There was some discussion at the last meeting regarding Virtual box > 1. http://virtualbox.org/ > 2. Virtual Box is a fully GPL'd virtualization product that runs under > either Linux or Windows. > 3. It is roughly equivalent to VMWare Workstation. > 4. There are RPMs (and .debs) available for most distributions. The > latest release is 1.5.4. > 5. I easily installed it on my laptop (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon AMD64 2GB), > created a Windows XP virtual Machine and installed Windows XP. I have > not experienced and performance issues. > 6. I installed it under SuSE 10.3 on my desktop system at home (Athalon > 32-bit 1.2Ghz and relatively low memory (3/4 GB). Again no performance > issues. > > I installed this out of curiosity. I initially had VMWare Server > installed on my laptop and removed it because of performance issues. > The original reason for virtualization was that my wife wanted to use > it for the Big Brother feeds under Real Player which are not doable > under Linux. While I was able to access those from the VM, the video > portion would occasionally freeze. While I don't have this requirement > any longer, virtualization is a big thing in the industry today, > especially in the enterprise where they can consolidate a number of > legacy apps on modern hardware. I had planned to replace VMWare server > with VMWare player, but player does not have the capability to create > VMs, you must acquire prebuilt VMs which is ok, but since I heard about > virtualbox, I decided to install it and was a very simple install from > Synaptic on Gutsy. In SuSE, I downloaded the RPM directly from > 2. Virtual Box is a fully GPL'd virtualization product that runs under > either Linux or Windows. > 3. It is roughly equivalent to VMWare Workstation. > 4. There are RPMs (and .debs) available for most distributions. The > latest release is 1.5.4. > 5. I easily installed it on my laptop (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon AMD64 2GB), > created a Windows XP virtual Machine and installed Windows XP. I have > not experienced and performance issues. > 6. I installed it under SuSE 10.3 on my desktop system at home (Athalon > 32-bit 1.2Ghz and relatively low memory (3/4 GB). Again no performance > issues. > > I installed this out of curiosity. I initially had VMWare Server > installed on my laptop and removed it because of performance issues. > The original reason for virtualization was that my wife wanted to use > it for the Big Brother feeds under Real Player which are not doable > under Linux. While I was able to access those from the VM, the video > portion would occasionally freeze. While I don't have this requirement > any longer, virtualization is a big thing in the industry today, > especially in the enterprise where they can consolidate a number of > legacy apps on modern hardware. I had planned to replace VMWare server > with VMWare player, but player does not have the capability to create > VMs, you must acquire prebuilt VMs which is ok, but since I heard about > virtualbox, I decided to install it and was a very simple in Synaptic > under Gutsy. In SuSE I downloaded the RPM from http://virtualbox.org/ > and simply rpm'd it. You also should grab the Guest Additions package > once you install the guest as this gives you more flexibility. > > The bottom line here is that this is a good FOSS product that supports > most Linux distros. You can also install it on Windows hosts and run > Linux as one of your virtual machines. I may take this approach in > some future installfests as an alternative to some Windows users since > shrinking NTFS file systems sometimes is time consuming and risky. > (Vista does have a utility to do it as does GParted and QTParted). > > One question that was asked by JABR was can you run an application > under the guest os that shows up as a separate Window under Linux. I > didn't understand what he was asking at the time until he mentioned > Exceed. Exceed is a an X server for Windows and allows you to run a > Linux/Unix app on a server and have it display in its own window under > Windows. AFAIK, neither VMWare nor Virtualbox allow an application > running in a virtual machine to display as a separate Window in the > host. That window will be constrained to the guest os windows under the > host, but the guest os may also be set up as full screen. But, if there > is a Linux guest, you can use X to do this. If the host is Windows, you > would need to install an X server such as Exceed or Cygwin, or Unix > Services for Windows. If the host is a Linux host, you already have > that feature. > > Another question is can you get to the guest's virtual drives from the > host os. The answer is no since the disks are vurtualized within each > VM, but... with a Windows guest you could mark a directory drive as > shareable (you can do this using the Windows Explorer), and your shares > will be visible to the Linux host. In the same manner, with a Linux > guest, you can use Samba to share directories to Windows hosts. > -- > -- > Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> > Boston Linux and Unix > PGP key id: 537C5846 > PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846 > > --Sig_/2LibuRjab3nBf/Tj5==fTpo-- > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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