[aclug-L] Re: WINLINUX 2000 FINAL BETA

[Bob_Deep <bobd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nate wrote:
> 
> Does VMware work only for Win 3.1 apps, or does it also work with
> Win95/98?

Well.. When you explain that Vmware actually emulates a complete
hardware enviroment, including BIOS, disks, mouse, network card and you
then have to install the Guest OS just like you would on real hardware,
perhaps it becomes more clear exactly what is going on.  I think that
*any* program that works on 95/98/nt will function just fine on a vmware
virtual machine, assuming the proper hardware is emulated by vmware.

See, assuming Vmware provides the proper support for your guest OS (and
it likely does) it's almost like you have loaded the second OS onto a
seperate machine, albeit a "virtual" machine.  You just interact with
this virtual machine through an X window (on linux at least).  You push
the "power" button, and watch the BIOS boot and initilize your hardware,
complete with memory check, beeps and all...

This is not to say there are not any problems...  There are.  Some of
the system's devices are not virtualized very well, and you are limited
to vmware's virtual display drivers in the guest OS.  Sound is somewhat
buggy, but works for the most part.  You are limited to 4 IDE 4gig hard
drives (on my version at least), no SCSI or RAID.  Also, virtual
machines "take over" some of your hardware (serial ports most noteable)
but I don't see how it could do otherwise.  Vmware also captures the
mouse at times, but you can get arround this once you have the guest OS
installed and the proper vmware tools installed on the guest.

Aside from these almost trivial problems, Vmware is really stable.  I've
had 2 virtual machines running concurently, one with 98 and one with NT
running on my P200 with 128Meg of Ram running Redhat 6.1 with little
effort.  Performance is *almost* the same as you would expect for the
guest OS alone, assuming you are not pegging the CPU or Memory usage is
too high.  The virtualized network card works flawless..

If you are going to do any serious computing on a guest OS, I'd sudgest
you get *alot* of memory, or expect performance to suffer as things get
swapped.  I would not expect to run a lot of games on the Guest OS if
they are visually oriented.  I suspect that the SVGA to X conversion is
less than a performance gain.  Although, you can ship the X display to
another box.. Meaning you could virtulaized MS Based hosts that are not
heavily used, and off load the display to some X display on the network.

Be warned... Some Window's based programs are VERY CPU intensive.  I've
seen Word peg the load on an otherwise idle machine to almost 2 even
when it's just sitting there waiting for you to type something.  Makes
you wonder what they are thinking there at MS when they write these
programs...(Perhaps it is that paper clip thing?)

They are giving away 30 day licenses for evaluation and provide some
good technical support via E-mail and a news server.  I did not need any
help installing it, though you may have to build a kernel module for
some versions of the kernel. You will need a copy of the distribution
media for any guest OS's you plan to install, as well as disk space for
their virtual drives...

-- 
      -=  Bob =-
Hey.. This is my mail and I charge for SPAM I receive...