VMware???'s

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

What exactly is vmware for? What kinds of stuff can you do with it? I keep reading windows mentioned along with vmware. Does it allow you to run windows within linux? If thats what its for then can it be used with win2000? I am about to go to vmwares website to check it out but would appreciate some info from the fellow gentoo users here. Thanks.

lx · Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2002 9:53 pm Post subject:

It emulates a computer (x86), so you get a virtual PC, it supports the bios and interrupt commands, some standard hardware (to allow harddisks / cdrom /cdr /network / simple videocard). The coolest feature is starting it you then get a normal bootup in a window (phoenix bios etc). It works fairly well, you can install any x86 operating system, but the supported systems are recommended, becuase you can then install the vmware tools which help accelerate the video card performance. You can also install linux inside a linux shell, or use the Windows version to install linux in Windows. It's cool, performance if good, but slower then win4lin (specialised on win98), it has some basic hardware (no full support for your hardware, just a general driver linked to the support layer of linux) with which you can use the network features of windows.

Cya lX.
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Ian Goldby · Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2002 10:00 pm Post subject:

Finite,

I've not used it, but I think this is roughly right: VMware is software that allows you to run one or more operating systems on your PC each within its own software 'virtual machine'. To grossly simplify, it is a bit like having a dual boot machine, but one in which you can switch between operating systems not by rebooting but by some kind of hot-key. The different operating systems co-exist inside your machine, running simultaneously.

I don't think it actually runs Windows within Linux. It's more kind of alongside Linux. If you want to run Windows applications inside Linux, you could look at the Wine project - this provides some of the run-time libraries and support to enable certain popular applications written for Windows to run under Linux. (This is a totally different approach to VMware, as the underlying OS being used for the Windows application here would be Linux, not Windows.) It's still very much in a developmental state, so it would be worth checking whether the applications you are interested in are supported yet.

Because of the way it works, you can also do other nifty things like storing the entire state of a virtual machine to disk to restore instantly later, e.g. after a reboot, or to provide a known initial machine state for software testing. Hope this helps.

Ian

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

I just checked the site and see that win2000 is supported. Does it need to be on a seperate system from gentoo and vmware for it to work or can it be on the same system/hd on a seperate partition? Its a little confusing in this area. From reading the instructions for 2000 its as if you can install 2000 within the vmware workstation its self. Hmmm.

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

So you could, theroetically install an unlimited amount of os's within themselves!!?? Deerrrrrrr

Crazy man

I think I actually saw a screen shot of this on a site somewhere awhile back. It was linux as the base os and then vmware/windows/linux of another flavor. I thought it was just pictures and not actually usable.

lx · Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2002 10:09 pm Post subject:

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

What I was saying is that someone had multiple vm's inside themselves. I can't find the pic right now but when I do I will post it here.

lx · Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2002 10:56 pm Post subject:

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

HA, that would be a limmiting factor ehh.

jtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2002 3:20 am Post subject:

ElCondor · Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2002 3:43 pm Post subject:

I've been using vmware now for more than 2 years. since I don't have any native windows, i ran different versions (98/nt/2k) and also other OSs (like netbsd) in vmware - great for testing, nice for viruses (undoable disk-changes), or even network-simulations (once i ran IIS on nt4 in vmware on my workstation and had a port from the firewall forwarded, so it was accessable from outside like any other server), since every vm gets a unique IP.

typically you get half (not measured, just a it-feels-like) of your real system speed in vmware. with >1GHz that's enough most

* ElCondor pasa *
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c_kuzmanic · Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2002 10:37 pm Post subject:

I use vmware every day and love it. If you're looking for something that's way faster than vmware, there's also win4lin which uses and installs a custom linux kernel. The advantage is that any process you run under win4lin gets passed to the kernel directly, so in terms of speed win4lin is much quicker and much more responsive than vmware.

snowmoon · n00b Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 64 Location: Albany,NY USA

My desktop at work has many annoying windows only programs tha don't work well under linux ( yet! ). I am not officially sanctioned to use linux either so I had to be low profile ( boss ok, it would want paperwork ). I used partition magic to carve down the 20GB hd to make room. I then installed gentoo, VMware now runs my Win2000 desktop on virtual console 8 and my X is on vc 7. Everything works peachy-keen and I hardly ever use the 2000 desktop excpt for outlook and the propriataty applications.

I don't know how I would get by without it. Our work just moved to SMS control too ( ICK! ).

lx · Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 5:08 pm Post subject:

snowmoon · n00b Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 64 Location: Albany,NY USA

As long as you have DGA enabled VMware will automaticly when running a VM grab the next console for fullscreen operation.

I'm still looking for a way to autostart(before login), but I'm sure that shouldn't be that hard.

lx · Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 10:28 pm Post subject: