Re: [Hampshire] VM

On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 09:48:53AM +0100, John Taylor wrote:
> John Taylor wrote:
> >Have just downloaded VM software from repository but don't have the
> >courage to actually open the can in case it does look like worms!
> >
> >Will it work with MS Vista?
> >Are there likely to be any major problems?
> >Will I really be able to switch (mouse click) between Kubuntu and MS?
> >Is it within the scope of a really golden oldie
> >
> >
> >John
> >
> Thanks to everyone but you all work on the assumption that I understand
> what *you *are talking about - how many types of VM are there? I went to
> the install "bit" and asked about VM and downloaded what I was
> given......so lets start again from a different perspective .

Unfortunately, if you can't tell us the name of the software you
installed, it's rather difficult to give any concrete advice. You
should be able to use your package management tool (you haven't even
said what distribution you're running...) to examine what packages you
have installed to find out which VM software you have.

> I have MS Vista partitioned away safely but as I use Kubuntu more and
> more I would like to switch between the two systems at the click of the
> mouse so I can use Adobe, my printer and scanner and some medical
> software that wont work in any other environment

Which OS do you want to be your "main" one? Windows or Linux? The
other one will run in a window.

The selection of VM software that you use will depend somewhat on
your hardware, too -- what sort of machine (i.e. processor) are you
running this on?

Also, note that you *won't* be able to run the same Windows
installation as both dual-boot and in a VM (due to driver
differences). Thus, you're probably looking at a reinstallation of
Vista inside the VM. You should be able to keep your existing
partitioning scheme, though.

Assuming that you're going to be using Linux as the "host"
(i.e. the main system) and Vista as the "guest"... Of the free systems
likely to be packaged with Linux distributions, I'd probably go for
qemu+kqemu on older hardware, or kvm on newer hardware. These are far
easier to manage than Xen (the other mature option).

Going slightly further afield, there's VMWare[1] (commercial, but
easy to use and pretty reliable), and VirtualBox[2] (commercial and
recently open-sourced). Either of these is likely to be easier to use
than qemu, kvm or Xen; It's been a long time since I've used VMWare,
and I don't know much about VirtualBox, so maybe others can help more
with details about those.

Running your printer and scanner from a VM may be problematic. The
easiest option is if they're both USB -- most VM systems now support
some kind of USB pass-through. If they're SCSI or parallel-port, then
you're going to have trouble.

Finally, you are likely to have some problems with networking in
your Vista guest, because Vista doesn't support (out of the box) the
virtual network cards in most of the VM systems available. There are
workarounds for most of them, though.

Hugo.

[1] http://www.vmware.com/
[2] http://www.virtualbox.org/

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