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Wil Reichert wrote: |
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> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote: |
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>> So that's a couple of votes for Virtual-Box. (That's from Sun |
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>> correct?) emerge virtualbox-bin? It seems to want me to fetch |
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>> something first. I'll have to check into that. |
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>> |
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>> There's also Xen, right? Is it too early for an Open Source alternative? |
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> |
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> Theres also the kvm option as well. Its got tight kernel support so |
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> theres no extranious modules to add & it runs Windows XP for me just |
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> fine. |
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> |
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Some things to consider before choosing: |
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1. Does your hardware support hardware-level virtualization. VMWare |
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works on anything (as does virtualbox I believe). Some of the other |
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options require newer CPUs (last few years). |
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2. I think Xen requires a modified OS to run (at least it used to). |
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Things might be different today. |
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3. Do you need to run your virtual machines detached from a console or |
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outside of X11? That is what turned me off of just about all the |
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options other than VMWare-server - they only work if the console is |
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running in a window. With VMWare I can start up a virtual machine from |
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a command line (even on a server without X11), and then ssh or remote |
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desktop into the underlying server. I can attach a console at any time, |
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and I can detach a console at any time. |
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4. Do you care about licensing issues? Some of these options are open |
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source, and some are not. Some require proprietary kernel modules to |
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run. VMWare even requires you to register to get a license key (free |
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for the server edition). |
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5. Look at the larger feature set in terms of snapshotting and all that |
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stuff. If you just want to run windows on your gentoo box any of the |
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options will do. If you want to do more look at the larger feature |
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list. One thing I love is that if I have some untrusted executable I |
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want to try out on Windows I can just snapshot the VM and run away. If |
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I don't like the end result I can just hit revert and poof everything is |
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back to how everything started. (Just make sure that you're not running |
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on an account that has access to networked resources outside the sandbox |
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and that you don't have roaming profiles or anything that could cause |
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the changes to escape the snapshot.) |
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