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On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 03:01:58PM -0700, Penguin Lover Tom Smith squawked: |
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> QEMU appears to have functionality similar to VMWare (I haven't tried it |
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> yet). I'm curious to here other Gentoo users' experience with this |
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> software. I will be using in a production environment so stability and |
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> uptime are very important, as are reasonable performance. |
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> |
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> I would very much appreciate any feedback you all can give me about your |
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> experience with QEMU. |
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|
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While I can't really vouch for stability and uptime, QEMU is a great |
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piece of software. I run it on my Dell D600 laptop with the kernel |
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accelerator (kqemu) enabled. From it I run Win XP SP2 with no |
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problems, and it is fairly fast (faster, at least, then my old 800Mhz |
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pentium 3 running the same software natively). |
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On the other hand, my uses of it are limited to |
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1) Microsoft Office: I have a legit copy, so might as well use it, |
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especially when sometimes people send me Word or Powerpoint files to |
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edit. |
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2) Windows Media Player: wmv9 has some funky drm built in that |
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mplayer can't deal with. Some foreign news websites I frequent uses |
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that horrible codec for streaming media. The sound can get flaky at |
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times, but it doesn't affect anything else. |
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|
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You might need to look carefully at the documentation for the network |
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side of things. I only run it with --user-net which puts the VM behind |
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a virtual firewall, which might make some things on the Windows side |
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with regards to network sharing break. |
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Also, QEMU being a complete emulator, it can't be used like |
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CrossoverOffice/Wine where you only run the software desired. You have |
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to start the VM, and run Windows from it. Which runs into a bit of |
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licensing issue: technically, if I read Microsoft's stance on this |
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correctly, you would need a separate license for each of your VMs, and |
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at that point, if you have x86 hardware, you might as well run Windows |
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natively. Of course, I might be wrong, but that is something you |
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should worry about. |
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I think software-wise QEMU is pretty good. But there might be a few |
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tripping stones on the deployment-side for you to watch out should you |
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go with using it in a corporate environment. |
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HTH, |
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|
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W |
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-- |
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"The problem is some dead white males didn't strict themselves to writing |
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literature." |
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~DeathMech, Some Student. P-town PHY 205 |
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Sortir en Pantoufles: up 59 days, 14:39 |
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-- |
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