Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[William Kenworthy]

On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 14:43 -0500, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de> wrote:
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> > virtual machines on my Gentoo.
> >
> > I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> > directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
> >
> > Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> > looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
>
> I've heard you should stay away from virtualbox, due to instability
> from their kernel modules.
>
> Apart from that, make sure your kernel has kvm support enabled.
>
> From there, you can either try playing with Xen (I've got my Gentoo
> desktop as my dom0), libvirt, qemu-kvm or vmware-workstation. I
> haven't tried any of the latter three on Gentoo, and I haven't tried
> vmware on Linux at *all*.
>
> I can't make a good recommendation for which would suit you best.
> Perhaps someone else could make a suggestion or two.
>

YMMV ... VB is stable and rarely if ever breaks, app and modules "just
work" - performance is as good as vmware

vmware is a pig, you have to wait for matching kernel versions, the
licensing system sucks (I am not part of the IT staff, so because my
Institution centralises licensing, I have to get them to download it for
me every few months ... which means talking new helpdesk staff through a
process I cant participate in).  The upgrade process sucks ... you need
to use the vmware overlay as the tree version often just wont build
(usually requires different patches for every version).  Its tied to
having particular versions/modules/kernels and you have to actively
manage it which includes things like putting a copy in your own portage
overlay since the version you are licenced for gets punted from the
tree/overlay so you end up chasing ebuilds from the attic ...  It also
currently fails glsa-check for libpng as it requires an old png version
to build (this may be something unique to my system)

In use, vmware breaks regularly ... often requires waiting weeks before
patches/updates for kernels are out so its restore from a working backup
until upgrades are fixed.  VB doesnt need this.

As I said, YMMV but I am hoping to phase vmware out of my area.  I have
been using vmware since Version 1 but have no love for it.  

BillK