not sure if OT or nOT : Oracle < Linux < Vmware < XP

[Steve Jardine]

> I'm running VMWare, with Linux as the host OS, on several different
> systems, and have never experienced any instability.

    Since VMware server emulates a specific "clean" system BIOS, and then performs "standard" OS/BIOS calls the to real hardware - then having a "non-standard" hardware/BIOS may give it problems. I know, rather bold statement, eh? 

    What I mean is this: There are supposed standard methods for interfacing with system BIOS. Now, if you have Phoenix (Intel) BIOS, or Award, or some of the other well cooked BIOS's with the correct versions then you may have no issues with some of the down and dirty calls VMware may make. However, it has been my experience that *many* motherboard manufacturers will buy a Phoenix BIOS developers license and then they will do a sliced down hack job that barely makes the hardware they are using work, let alone well...

    It has been my experience that, if I remember correctly, Phoenix licenses "chunks" of their code via "packages". If you do not buy the whole kit (that would be all packages - which is somewhat pricey - plus the per seat license expense), you may have to beg, borrow, steal, or *gulp* write your own routines for some hardware.

    Plus (!!!) I have been working with a company that flat bought crappy chips for their design, mixed little and big endian on the same backplane, have marginal/mixed/real close to the edge timing with the chipset, cut corners everywhere they can and they wonder why they have issues running it with RT Linux doing some real high-performance stuff!!

    What it comes down to is "caveat emptor". Some stuff plays much better with other stuff - particularly when you emulate an entire hardware abstraction layer...

    My opinion, but I think I can say as a user of VMware Server since they came out with it (for companies I have worked for that forced me to use MS stuff), if you get quality hardware it will be pretty stable.. BTW - quality does *not* equate to the most expensive, or the one that has the biggest ad in most publications.



    Steve