[SOLVED] Running a Windows guest system: which VM?

[einheitlix]

Hi,

I've been using VMWare for a while now to run a very spartanic Windows system inside my Gentoo, which I mainly use to play poker (yes it works with wine, but not if I also want all those nice tracking and statistic tools that run on-the-fly with the poker software).

I don't really like VMWare. It's huge and it eats up a lot of memory and space, and sure enough, each time I started it, my keyboard is screwed up, meaning that X doesn't notice some keys anymore, like Shift, Ctrl, Alt, which is very annoying... and I have to restart X.

So my question is: is there a better solution?
I know there are quite a few virtualization possibilities for Linux out there, besides VMWare. Xen, KVM, Virtuozzo, OpenVZ, Iguest... do any of you have any experience with these? What would be best suited for me? My requirements are simple: run a Windows guest operating system and inside of it, some unexpensive applications. Being able to somehow access the network within the VM is a must. And it should use as few resources as possible
My computer is a AMD64 3000+ with 1G RAM. I should mention that I'm using a 64-bit Gentoo.

Thank you guys!

Malte
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[nixnut]

there's virtualbox, but I don't think you'll find it much different from vmware. Windows will not run in openvz, kvm, vserver etc. since there's only one linux kernel that manages all the resources. Even for Xen you'll need a version of windows that's adapted to run under it unless the cpu has hardware virtualisation support built in.
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[Hu]

According to the guest support status page, KVM can run a Windows guest.

[aronparsons]

I think you'll be pleased with VirtualBox. I moved off of VMware after many years after trying it. It's faster than VMware Workstation by a long shot; it doesn't thrash the disk as much, it has better input response, it resumes *much* quicker and doesn't lag your whole system down even when under load. It also has better keyboard/mouse grabbing behavior and it's open source. If you need USB support you'll need to run the binary version, otherwise you can run the fully open version.

[tutaepaki]

I'd 2nd, (third?) the Virtualbox option. I've found it works really well for me. My XP VM runs quite acceptably on my 2.4Ghz machine with 1G RAM.

[einheitlix]

Hi,

thanks a lot! I tried out VirtualBox and it's awesome!
It's more stable, it's faster, I like the GUI better, it runs in userspace without any probs (as opposed to VMWare, which I always had problems with if not run as root). And last but not least, the seamless mode is a gorgeous feature!

I made a screenshot. Poker with Linux. This is a Gentoo with Xfce4 and Compiz, plus a VirtualBox running WinXP in seamless mode in the background.
http://hetzner.scummunity.de/~malte/linuxpoker.png

Ok, ICMP doesn't work when accessing the network though NAT (this worked with VMWare, I think), but I don't care. As long as I can play poker! And people who do need it can still configure a bridged ethernet device, which isn't that difficult (as long as you are behind a router, I think; could be more problematic when using a modem and PPP...).

Thanks for the hint!
_________________
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community.

[srilliet]

first bare with me i never used virtualbox but after strugling with nvidia drivers in xen i gave up.

i got vertualbox installed and running to the point were i can install windows but i can not find any documents on how to do this. also i have windows installed on a partition is it possible to yous that partition

thanks stephen