F10 -- Xen, VirtualBox, or VMWare?
Beartooth
Beartooth at swva.net
Sun Feb 15 19:01:45 UTC 2009
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:00:55 -0700, Phil Meyer wrote:
> McGuffey, David C. wrote:
>> Rather than configuring a dual-boot machine for running those
>> occasional Windows apps, which one of these virtualization tools
>> provides the best (read most accurate) virtualization environment on
>> F10? Which one is the easiest to install and configure? I had
>> problems with VMWare on F7, and would prefer not to go that route
>> again. I have no experience with the other two.
> I would vote KVM as well. Support for native disks and USB devices is
> trivial. However, the selling points for me of all of them are these:
>
> 1. Xen == Novel/Microsoft (yes, MS bought rights to Xen, and development
> stopped/slowed to nothing)
>
> 2. VMWare == Windows host focus. Linux support is sub par and building
> their kernel modules may always be an issue.
>
> 3. KVM is in the mainline kernel and gets a lot of (good and bad)
> attention.
>
> 4. Virtualbox == some really old code from SUN. It requires its own
> device driver and can conflict with KVM.
What of Rahul's comment, further up the thread, saying "KVM
(assuming you have the hardware support) with Virt-manager (if you
need a GUI)"??
How do we tell if we have the hardware it takes? (And I for one
do need a GUI for anything very complicated.)
> 5. I am a command line/scripting person, and starting a series of VMs
> based upon KVM is easily made to be automatic.
>
> I have no problem typing:
>
> $ sudo qemu-kvm -hda /dev/sdb1 -net nic -net user -m 1024 -soundhw all
Aaaiiieeeee! <runs screaming into the middle distance>
Such CLI-fu is beyond all hope for me. I prefer the CLI where
feasible, to be sure, but I won't live long enough to be able to type a
whole such line. So what's your take on this Virt-GUI? Is it part of KVM?
Can we just do "yum install kvm" or "yum install kvm virt" and
expect to get, if not success, a message we can use to make success
possible? Something, I mean, more encouraging than "Go replace your
motherboard, hard drive, and xkcd-bus, you idiot!"??
Or is this whole alternative to dual booting still for Alpha Plus
Technoids only?
Dumb question on a small point of purism, btw. IF (big if) I
understand correctly, some if not all of these virtualizers actually
contain (in some sense of "contain") a full install of XP or whatever,
wrapped in linux like a mystery inside an enigma -- or a cyst inside an
organ. Does KVM?? I'd a lot rather get rid of all the products of Redmond
if I can ....
--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.
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