Re: VmWare and VPC Compared Indepth, Easiest Linux Devel VM

  • From: Veli-Pekka Tätilä <vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:32:48 +0200

Hi Octavian,
Darn, seems in deed the machine link I gave you is down, I got a page
but the download didn't work today. It did work a couple of days back,
however. YOu might try some other Ubuntu 7.10 virtual appliances on the
site, I seem to recall there were several. Just be sure to pick desktop
rather than server. The home page for the virtual appliances is:

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/

Alternatively, if you want my config, which also includes a tuned up
Orca and GNome, plus some settings that help in making admin dialogs
accessible, I can send you the whole image off-list. It is 600 MB
rar:ed. I can either use sendspace or use my Uni account, which gives
download rates of about 400 kilobytes per sec here in Finland.

Actually I slightly simplified the choice between VmWare and VIrtual PC:
VmWare Player is great because it is an easy to use, recent release and
because you can share prebuild virtual machines running DOs and LInux
with ease, which are dubbed the virtual appliances. Virtual PC has
nothing like that. HOwever, you cannot create new virtual machines with
VmWare Player or rather you can but you'll have to start hacking an
existing machine file as text. Alternatively, you can import machine's
built in Virtual PC, too, which is why I also have Virtual PC here.

The edition of VmWare that does support the creation of new machines for
free is VmWare server, which requires registration. However, it is
slower than the player, much older and more buggy (i.e. sound crackles
in Festival), seldom updated and suffers from a horribly technical
sounding server interface aimed at large company admins. It also runs
plenty of background components as exes while Windows starts. It doesn't
have sound on, by default, for instance.

Then there's virtual PC. It is even easier to use than VmWare Player,
targets the home user as well and has the most accessible GUi for
managing virtual machines i.e. settings and creation. it also supports
hardware virtualization instructions of AMD and Intel, which supposedly
makes a big performance difference. I have such an AMd processor here.
VmWare server doesn't support that, and I'm not sure VmWare Player does
either, since there's no documentation for or against. Even in VPC you
have to separately enable hardware virtualization in the global and per
machine preferences.

VPC's biggest single fault, however, is that it officially only supports
Windows 98 and later. Even DOS, Windows 95 let alone Linux is supported.
You can run Linux but you do need workarounds google for "gutsy gibbon"
"virtual pc" for more details. There are also no Virtual PC additions 
for LInux meaning Linux doesnt integrate as well with the host Os and
doesn't run as fast as it would under VmWare. 

So if VIrtual Pc would officially run DOs and LInux and if it supported
Virtual Appliances I would take that, unless Linux portability of VMs is
important. However, now I'll use Virtual PC for Windows and VMWare
player plus virtual appliances for LInux, since any popular new versions
are quickly turned into virtual appliances. I do use Virtual PC for
creating Vmware Player machine's, though haven't tried this yet, but it
should work. I used to use VmWare Server but won't any more, usability
can make a huge difference.

For DOs I use the DOs Box emulator, actually, and graphical frontends
for runing particular apps.

There's also a greatly hyped app called Virtual Box which supposedly
runs quite well, too. I know nothing about this, but you can take a look
here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

-- 
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila

Octavian Rasnita wrote:
> 
> Hi Velu,
> 
> Thanks for those details and that link.
> 
> Ok, yes, I want to use Linux as a virtual machine, so it seems that I'll
> better stay with VMWare.
> I will install VMWare again, because I had some issues with my computer, and
> I will try to install that virtual appliance from the VMWare site.
> 
> I've tried to download that virtual appliance, but I wasn't able. After I
> clicked on the "Download this appliance" link, an empty web page appeared. I
> have also tried the link "Register", but same thing happend.
> 
> Do you have any idea what could be the problem?
> 
> I've seen that the source of the empty web page contains many Javascript
> codes, but they should work fine.
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