Vmware: was Lightzone

[Michael Hipp]

Collins Richey wrote:
> On Saturday 26 May 2007, Ken Moffat wrote:
>> Bruce Marshall wrote:
>>> I've used VMware Workstation for many years.
>> I take this as an endorsement of vmware?
> I would agree with that.    It has always worked quite well but I haven't done
> anything really special with it....
> 
> ---
> 
> I've only recently had any exposure to Vmware, but now we're using it
> at work. The engineers we support have to have Linux (for software
> development) and Windows (for Outlook and the usual Oracle crapware
> and Internet Exploder) at their desks.
> 
> [An aside: Oracle is a perfectly good database, but every company I've
> worked for has crapware for the gui interface to the database that
> everyone has to use for internal stuff. It appears to have been
> designed by a fifth grader after too much Ovaltine.]
> 
> We've just put up the first half-dozen workstations with Linux,
> Vmplayer, and WinXP. Since we don't have install media for the
> "virusware", we used the excellent converter program supplied by
> Vmware to create a playable image of WinXP. In our case that's 6G !!
> of "virusware" which adds a little time to the kickstart run as you
> can imagine. You need a little extra memory and an extra NIC in the
> box, but it runs like a champ. We restrict the WinXP VM to 384M which
> is plenty for the few windows aps that we actually need. All our new
> desktop boxes are dual core with 2M memory, so it's a great fit.
> 
> The only problem with Vmware (or any virtual solution) is that you're
> fairly restricted in the kernels that are supported. Fortunately the
> standard RHEL4-U4 kernel is a fit.
> 
> [Another aside: We wanted to move up to an RH errata kernel to fix a
> few exposures, but RH didn't bother to test the kernel with latest
> hardware. Our boxes (HP AMD) have sata DVD readers, and the errata
> kernel goes nuts in that environment - continuously looping error
> messages.]
> 
> As we roll out new worksttions, we will save a bundle - only one box
> per desk and no KVM setup (always unreliable). NIC cards are dirt
> cheap. Now if the company would just order boxes with decent nVidia
> cards instead of the Other Brand!
> 
> I've got the new setup on my ow work desktop machine (a single
> processor AMD with 2M), and it hauls ass.
> 
> Now that I've got the proof of concept, I need to get serious about
> building a Vmware station for my wife.
> 
> Another advantage of Vmware. If you quit out of vmplayer, t does the
> equivalent of a suspend for the WinXP VM, so you don't need a full
> reboot next time you startup. Even a full boot runs just as fast or
> faster than on real hardware.

I've been using VMware Workstation and VMware Server for quite some time now. 
It is works very well. I've used every combination (Win on Win, Lin on Win, 
Win on Lin, Lin on Lin) it all just works.

Parallels seems to be getting good reviews and is cheaper. But I've not tried it.

Michael