OS X vs. desktop Linux -- or virtualization for both

[Richard Pieri]

On Jun 22, 2009, at 10:19 AM, grg-webvisible+blu-iSp611qFfoI3uPMLIKxrzw at public.gmane.org wrote:
> as rich & feanil say above, virtualization sounds like the right  
> answer;
> it seems to me that ideally I'd get the laptop with windows and all  
> the
> manufacturer's customizations & apps installed, then pop in a  
> virtualizing
> host os, or as one of many equal running oses -- so long as windows  
> isn't
> the host).  ideally I'd also be able to do things like fork the  
> windows

Try to avoid it.  A lot of what vendors bung in there is custom  
drivers for their own custom hardware and none of that will work in  
the VM regardless of who's VM you use.  In the end you get a lot of  
disk and registry bloat for zero benefit and in some cases you can't  
remove it.  My own experience with that is a particular sound driver  
that can't be uninstalled because the sound hardware doesn't exist.   
Thankyouverymuchstupidvendor.

Another issue is how Windows/NT itself handles multiple CPUs.  You  
can't take a multi-CPU (including multiple core) Windows/NT image and  
run it on a single CPU or core.  The HAL won't load.  Making it work  
requires finding the correct HAL DLL and renaming files around so that  
the correct HAL gets loaded... and that requires mounting the virtual  
disk image read-write somewhere... and *that* is a whole 'nother pain  
in the ass if it's NTFS.

I would (and do) try to build the VM from scratch and install what I  
need from the vendor-supplied CDs, saving the P2V conversion as a last  
resort.

--Rich P.