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Home > Archive > Linux Debian support > October 2005 > Multiboot or VMWare?
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Multiboot or VMWare?
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| Which is the best way to experiment with different distros, Multiboot or
VMWare?
--
Chris
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| Shannon Lloyd 2005-10-24, 9:42 am |
| Chris wrote:
> Which is the best way to experiment with different distros, Multiboot or
> VMWare?
That probably depends on what you are doing with your various
distributions. Are you playing games? If so, VMWare probably isn't the
best solution. VMWare is extremely useful if you are doing things like
software or web development, and you need to test your applications on
various platforms and/or different browsers. If you are just
"experimenting" to see which distro(s) you like, and you do not already
own VMWare, it is a rather expensive way (about US$200) to test them
out. A multiboot system will give you a better idea of how the various
distros run natively, and is probably a better solution unless you need
to test things out on multiple platforms concurrently. On the plus side
for VMWare, you can set up a virtual machine with a 30Gb virtual disk,
and it will only "take" the space that it needs from the host, meaning
that the majority of that 30Gb is still available to use on the host
machine until the virtual machine grows into it. You don't really have
that luxury in a multiboot environment - if you create a 30gb partition
to install a distro, even if that distro only installs into 2gb of that
space, you can't do anything else with that wasted space.
If you are considering purchasing vmware, in my experience running a
Windows virtual machine (guest) on a Linux host is smoother than the
other way around.
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| Michael Perry 2005-10-24, 9:42 am |
| In article <pDtP4eBM2SWDFwi7@[127.0.0.1]>, nospam@[127.0.0.1] says...
> Which is the best way to experiment with different distros, Multiboot or
> VMWare?
>
I don't personally like dual-boot systems so I do things in VMware
because I already own version 5 workstation and GSX for Linux. If you
just want to play, VMware is expensive. If you are doing work, VMware
is a lifesaver at times since it has features that allow rolling back,
snapshots, sharing/cloning of images. I can do rapid deployments of
test linux instances using GSX and let people see off the 'net. Thats
extremely useful for folks that want to inspect a variety of Linux
distro's.
If you're playing around and just want to see what a distribution is
like, I would either dual boot or just buy a system that I don't care
about and have at it. I bought a cheapo case, AMD something, 512mb of
memory, and an older nvidia card for this purpose. The cost may have
been a bit more than VMware workstation in the end; but I had most of
the stuff laying around to build it. VMware GSX is definitely more
expensive but you get more.
--
Michael Perry | Do or do not. There is no try --Master Yoda
mperry@lnxpowered.org | http://www.lnxpowered.org
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