Windows virtual machine on linux help

[marbux]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Kristoffer Gustafsson
<kg84 at dreamwld.com> wrote:
> Hi.
> I'm planning too to try windows on virtualbox.

Using Virtual Box, I've got Windows 7 64-bit running as a virtual
guest on a Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit host for purposes of testing software I
help develop. The machine itself is pretty fast and everything happens
quickly in Ubuntu.

But Win7 runs like very slow molasses this way, not suitable at all
for production work.

I've tried it the other way around (Win7 host; Ubuntu 9.10 virtual
guest) and didn't notice any performance loss at all in Ubuntu. But
since I do almost all of my work in Ubuntu and don't need Win7 except
for testing, and because I have several virtual machines for different
operating environments for testing purposes (our software is
multi-platform), I reverted to running Ubuntu as the host and Win7 as
the guest.

So based on this experience, I'd recommend that if you want to use
Windows for production, run it on bare metal and run Ubuntu on Virtual
Box.

[more]

> But I've searched and searched, and can't find any good examples and such,
> how to use vboxmanage and so.
> Can you give me step by step guide on how to do it? I've got an iso with
> unattended installation.
> I want to enable sound, cd rom support, and usb.

The open source version of Virtual Box in the Ubuntu repositories does
not support USB.

For that you'll need the binary version available from
<http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads>. Unlike the open source
version, it has user documentation. The Help file documentation is
adequate and is also online in both HTML and PDF formats at
<http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation>.

A critical step in configuring a Virtual Box virtual machine after
installing the guest operating system is to install the "guest
additions" for that operating system. Without the guest additions, you
will lack a lot of expected features such as sound and USB support.

If you hit any problems, you'd be far better off asking on the Virtual
Box forums or mailing list than asking me.
<http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Community>. There are people there who
know far more about Virtual Box than I do.

> Also, is virtualbox better than qemu?

I haven't tried qemu for years but didn't care for it back then.
Likely, it has improved. I left VMWare for Virtual Box because
creating and configuring a virtual machine on Virtual Box was far
easier for me. But I do know people who much prefer VMWare, so your
mileage may vary.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Paul

-- 
Universal Interoperability Council
<http:www.universal-interop-council.org>