Cheap Linux Hardware - Virtualizing Windows on Linux

Author

Virtualizing Windows on Linux

pinkfloydhomer@gmail.com

2007-09-06, 7:26 am

I use both Windows and Linux, but I hate dual booting. Everything ends
up being scattered among the two systems.

Ideally, I would like to be able to switch seamlessly between Windows
and Linux with no delay or performance loss involved, and without
having to have to computers running. But we're not quite there yet, I
guess.

But how good _can_ it get?

I want to run some Linux distro and then run some virtualization
software on it with Windows running as a guest OS inside.

Now! I have some questions:

1) I currently have a dual core Athlon 64 (socket 939). Are there
processors significantly better for virtualization than this? Should I
get another more virtualization-friendly system, and which?

2) Which virtualization software should I run? VMware, Xen, foo, bar,
or whatever they're all called?

3) Are some distros better than others for this?

4) Does it matter if the host and/or guest OS is 32-bit or 64-bit?

5) Can I virtualize Vista also, if I want to?

/David

Gerry \(The MOTH\)

2007-09-06, 1:15 pm

<pinkfloydhomer@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189078154.303094.168580@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>I use both Windows and Linux, but I hate dual booting. Everything ends
> up being scattered among the two systems.
>
> Ideally, I would like to be able to switch seamlessly between Windows
> and Linux with no delay or performance loss involved, and without
> having to have to computers running. But we're not quite there yet, I
> guess.
>
> But how good _can_ it get?
>
> I want to run some Linux distro and then run some virtualization
> software on it with Windows running as a guest OS inside.
>
> Now! I have some questions:
>
> 1) I currently have a dual core Athlon 64 (socket 939). Are there
> processors significantly better for virtualization than this? Should I
> get another more virtualization-friendly system, and which?
>
> 2) Which virtualization software should I run? VMware, Xen, foo, bar,
> or whatever they're all called?
>
> 3) Are some distros better than others for this?
>
> 4) Does it matter if the host and/or guest OS is 32-bit or 64-bit?
>
> 5) Can I virtualize Vista also, if I want to?
>
> /David
>

What program are you running in Windows?
Is there no Linux equivalent? If not, have you tried using Wine (Windows
type emulator) from within Linux?

--
Gerry (The MOTH)

General Schvantzkoph

2007-09-06, 1:15 pm

On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:29:14 +0000, pinkfloydhomer@gmail.com wrote:

> I use both Windows and Linux, but I hate dual booting. Everything ends
> up being scattered among the two systems.
>
> Ideally, I would like to be able to switch seamlessly between Windows
> and Linux with no delay or performance loss involved, and without having
> to have to computers running. But we're not quite there yet, I guess.
>
> But how good _can_ it get?
>
> I want to run some Linux distro and then run some virtualization
> software on it with Windows running as a guest OS inside.
>
> Now! I have some questions:
>
> 1) I currently have a dual core Athlon 64 (socket 939). Are there
> processors significantly better for virtualization than this? Should I
> get another more virtualization-friendly system, and which?
>
> 2) Which virtualization software should I run? VMware, Xen, foo, bar, or
> whatever they're all called?
>
> 3) Are some distros better than others for this?
>
> 4) Does it matter if the host and/or guest OS is 32-bit or 64-bit?
>
> 5) Can I virtualize Vista also, if I want to?
>
> /David

VMware Server works fine. The 939 pin A64 lacks hardware virtualization
support but software virtualization works fine if all you want to do is
run one VM. You will need lots of RAM. I've run VMware with machines with
as little as 1.5G but occasionally It's pushed the system into using the
SWAP space which slows the system to a crawl. I'd up your box to 4G.

VMware requires a patch to run on a modern kernel, they only support
2.6.18 or earlier out of the box (which is what RHEL 5 uses). If you
Google Fedora 7 VMware, you'll find the link to the patch (it works fine,
I'm running VMware on 64bit Fedora7 with a 2.6.22 kernel). I've been
using W2K, XP, and Linux VMs on top of VMserver, they work great.

Both the Core2 and the AM2 have hardware virtualization support so any
future system that you get will handle virtualization better than your
current box. However the performance of the software virtualization is
good enough so you don't have to replace your system just to run VMNware.

Scott Alfter

2007-09-07, 7:17 am

In article <pan.2007.09.06.13.32.04@yahoo.com>,
General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:29:14 +0000, pinkfloydhomer@gmail.com wrote:
>
>VMware requires a patch to run on a modern kernel, they only support
>2.6.18 or earlier out of the box (which is what RHEL 5 uses). If you
>Google Fedora 7 VMware, you'll find the link to the patch (it works fine,
>I'm running VMware on 64bit Fedora7 with a 2.6.22 kernel). I've been
>using W2K, XP, and Linux VMs on top of VMserver, they work great.

Gentoo's vmware-modules ebuild takes care of this automagically for whatever
kernel you're running. I use it with VMware Player on a couple of machines:
a notebook with a Turion64 (software virtualization) and a desktop with a
Core 2 Duo (hardware virtualization). WinXP runs pretty nicely on both.

I've also tried QEMU in the past, but even with kqemu, performance left
something to be desired. The transition on the desktop between the Linux
host and the Windows guest also isn't as seamless as it is with VMware.

I considered kvm on the Core 2 Duo box, but it doesn't seem to be in a
usable state at this point. My only experience with Xen has been to run
Linux on Linux on a dual-Opteron box at work. (I have my mail and websites
hosted by a service provider who uses Xen to offer virtual private servers,
but they did all the host-side config for that.)

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Larry W. Hatcher

2007-09-08, 1:20 pm

On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:37:16 -0500, Scott Alfter wrote:

> In article <pan.2007.09.06.13.32.04@yahoo.com>, General Schvantzkoph
> <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Gentoo's vmware-modules ebuild takes care of this automagically for
> whatever kernel you're running. I use it with VMware Player on a couple
> of machines: a notebook with a Turion64 (software virtualization) and a
> desktop with a Core 2 Duo (hardware virtualization). WinXP runs pretty
> nicely on both.
>
> I've also tried QEMU in the past, but even with kqemu, performance left
> something to be desired. The transition on the desktop between the
> Linux host and the Windows guest also isn't as seamless as it is with
> VMware.
>
> I considered kvm on the Core 2 Duo box, but it doesn't seem to be in a
> usable state at this point. My only experience with Xen has been to run
> Linux on Linux on a dual-Opteron box at work. (I have my mail and
> websites hosted by a service provider who uses Xen to offer virtual
> private servers, but they did all the host-side config for that.)
>
> _/_
> / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
> (IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
> \_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on
> Usenet?

I was using VMWare-Server to run Windows XP as a virtual machine. All
worked well except 3D or direct rendering. However, I've since
discovered VirtualBox. It works as well as VMWare and is opensource. In
fact, the virtual machine seems to run faster than in VMWare. I've now
quit using VMWare altogether.

You might give VirtualBox a try!

HTH
--
Registered Linux User #: 222896
Larry W. Hatcher