[Tfug] virtual machines, was: Re: battery life, power management and windows vs linux

[Shawn Nock]

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Jeremy D Rogers wrote:
>> Link:
>> Users running Zemax under VMWare report 80% native speed.
>> http://www.zemax.com/kb/articles/41/5/What-Computer-Should-I-Buy-to-Run-ZEMAX/Page5.html
> 
> Why would you expect VMWare or Xen to be faster? 

I really didn't expect anything. My previous experience was with bochs
and (really just a moment or two with) qemu (the deal was borked when I
could pass through serial devices) a few years ago. VMWare and Xen (both
which I use currently) out did my previous experience with qemu.

> I tried kqemu a few
> weeks back and it was pretty snappy, now it looks like KVM will be
> even better now that I have a processor that supports vmx. (I was
> using qemu generically to include kqemu and kvm which, if I understand
> correctly, are two kernel modules for qemu depending on the proc you
> have.)

Certainly advancements have been made and KVM has been in the news
recently. I believe you when you say it was snappy. My experience has
been primarily with the two options I advocated.

One of the most appealing reasons to choose VMWare's products is the
VMWare-tools package that makes GUI interactions a nice experience
(mouse tracking that isn't 1/2 sec. behind is great, the windows SVGA
driver is nice too.). When you have to interact with a virtualized GUI
VMWare is hard to pass up.

> 
> BTW, this is retardedly easy to setup on debian:
> http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Debian

Xen is a single check box during or after install on SuSE (open or
otherwise) and RedHat/Fedora. Vmware is a single perl script installer
that hasn't failed me yet (as long as you have the source for the kernel
you are running).

Virtualization is making it to the mainstream... Options are everywhere,
try them all.

Peace,
Shawn

- --
Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0xB64200E1)
Unix Systems Group; CCIT
University of Arizona
nock at email.arizona.edu
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