VMWare

[SendTrash]

Has anyone tried VMWare? I want to run linux in my Windows 2000... I downloaded the evaluation version and want to know how to install Linux...
VMWare doesn't come with Linux right? I ahve a Mandrak7.2 install CD.. so how do I go about installing Linux under VMware?

 

[GL]

VMWare is a virtual machine. That is, think of it as a seperate computer in an environment created by your own computer. After you install VMWare, run it, press the 'power on' button, and your virtual machine will begin to bootup. You may want to go into the virtual BIOS and change some things before trying to install linux (most notably, there's a hard disk option to do with large hard disks...you should probably choose the correct option). As far as installing linux, just make sure you have a bootable CD or boot disk and have it in the correct drive. The installation should proceed as usual. It's really straightforward...the only problem I had was with that BIOS option but once I figured that out it was smooth sailing.

-GL

 

[Almighty1]

I should ask, how much of a deidcated linux machine's performance does it give you and does it slow down your win2k by alot?

 

[SendTrash]

Well.... about performance, it is painfully slow, but that is expected. BTW, for the install.... where do I install the OS? or does VMware make sure that Linux installs in the subfolder that is makes for it?

 

[GL]

VMWare has an virtual hard disk created inside a file under its "VMs" folder. Your installation of Linux will be installed on a file there. It will grow dynamically in size until a predetermined maximum size is reached; but to Linux it will have the capacity of this maximum size always.

Performance wise
I'm running Slackware 7.1 on Win2k Pro (Celeron 520, 256MB RAM) and it's not that slow. Graphics wise it is. But in terms of actual processing power, the guest operating system isn't too sluggish. Just don't expect X-windows to fly or anything because it won't.

-GL

 

[Almighty1]

I can imagine graphics performance to be slow but I guess I should ask would be how much of a dedicated performance machine would you actually see both graphics/non-graphics? and how much does it slow down win2k?

 

[GL]

Almighty,

It's hard for me to put a number on things. I know that Win2K slows down but I'm almost positive it has to do with RAM - there's quite a lot of disk thrashing when I switch between using Win2K and the VMWare software. And I've got 256MB RAM. I've only done light things on Win2K while a VM was running, like web browsing. It was just as fast, it just took a while for things to get started because of the disk thrashing. So I'd say the bottleneck for performance lies with the RAM first. Since the VM is just another process as far as Win2k goes, you could probably change it's priority to either give it more CPU time than other programs running under win2k, or make it share CPU time nicely. The only number that I've really looked at is CPU useage when playing an MP3. In win2k using winamp, the CPU useage according to task manager is ~3% on my Celeron 520. Using XMMS on Slackware 7.1 in a VM, the CPU useage is 15%. Quite a big jump. But I've never had an mp3 skip while using the VM even while doing intense things

-GL

 

[Almighty1]

GL,

That still sounds pretty impressive so maybe I'll give it a shot I guess. Thanks for the input!

 

[FUBAR]

Do you guys have any experience on a dual processor box? Is it posible that windows or linux(if you're going the other way) would fork the VM process to the other cpu?

Just an idea/thought.

 

[zzzz]

Fubar, I remember that being advertised as a new feature in vmware 2.
zzzz