After several weeks of trying out different distros of Linux (heck, different “flavored” distros of Ubuntu 8.04, for that matter) and four different OSes under two three different virtual machine schemas, here’s a waypoint.
Settled on plain vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 as my OS on this machine.*
Under all of the Linux distros, Virtualbox provided the slickest, easiest install and the best implementation of some things (sound) and spotty implementation of others (USB). Does NOT allow 64-bit client machines on a 64-bit host. That killed it for me.
VMWare Player? So-so ease of installation (some command line stuff but notaproblem). Extremely kludgy getting network functionality on clients. Way too many hoops to jump through and flaky networking when it did work. DOA.
VMWare Server. Ahhh. Screwed up, overly-complex installation procedure, but aside from some peripherals and such, almost all essentials work in client machines, certainly enough for almost all my needs in the various Windows client machines (for some of the remote computing tools suitable for some clients, for example, a Windows XP/2000/98 VM session works “good enough”). “Good enough” is good enough for now. Works fine testing new-to-me or upgraded Windows programs, Windows updates sees no difference to ordinary Windows machines, etc. It just (mostly–still would like sound) works. Do note that each of the VMs is allocated no more than 256MiB memory and all seem to run a lot snappier than any similarly-configured Windows system. Nice. Heck, I wouldn’t even attempt to install a typical WinXP (32) on a real machine with only 256MiB of RAM.
[Update–for whoever cares. *heh* I had a Q via email. No, I haven’t yet tried out Xen. Gimme some time, ‘K? And next time, feel free to use the comments section here to ask. 🙂 ]
Note: “[T]esting new-to-me or upgraded Windows programs… ” Tried out the updated a-squared anti-malware in a fully-licensed, full-featured installation in a WinXPP 64-bit VM and… if you’re one of the folks I sent a “here’s a freebie” email to, you might want to toss that freebie in the Recycle Bin. Crashes the VM every time it scans. Methinks it needs a bit of work before being ready for prime time. (Of course, it may also have something to do with the fact that the a-squared product is a 32-bit app, and M$’s WoW implementation of 32-bit apps in XP64 isn’t absolutely perfect, so it may still be fine for 32-bit Windows. I guess I’ll try it one another installation as well, then.)
Other freebies like this one (a nice standalone defragger) and this one (for CD Burning) have seemed to be fine, causing no problems and working well.
N.B. The CD-burning program, CDBurnerXP, requires the .NET framework be installed. No biggie. If you don’t already have it installed, the program will lead you through getting it when you invoke its installation routine.
For those of y’all running 64-bit OSes, I continue to like Opera browser. The 64-bit Internet Expploder 7 is really no improvement over IE7 32-bit; Forefox has too many extensions and plugins that aren’t 64-bit compatible to be competitive with Opera, either, IMO.
Of course, any more, since the primary face of any OS for me is the Web Browser (with email client a close second), having a stable, secure, capable browser that looks and acts the same (and has the same plugin/extension/widget behavior) in all OSes is a big plus for me. Hmmm… wonder what it’d take to install Mac OSX in a virtual machine? Never really thought about it since I don’t have an installation DVD for it sitting around and the thought of shelling out some $$ just to buy a copy and try to find out doesn’t appeal to me much. *heh*
Next? Need to see about installing a BSD in a VM. Just some more fun, cos I know NO ONE who’d need any help with something like PCBSD, the thing is so easy to install/use.
Time to stop rambling on? Mayb…
*“this machine”=AMD 2X64 5200+, 4GiB RAM, 400GiB primary hard drive, etc.