The Virtual Machine Thread

[The_Librarian]

Seeing that a couple of people have started to experiment with VM's (Virtual Machines) I have decided to start this thread where we all can hand out hints and tips on how to get the best from your VM.

Good luck, and enjoy!

[Telkomisaloser]

It's my fault... isn't it

[The_Librarian]

I have decided to go with Qemu as MS Virtual PC is bound to only one OS - Windows.

Interestingly, I have noticed that Windows95 takes more than 6 hours to install on Qemu running (default settings mostly) on a 2.80GHz Celeron laptop with 768Mb RAM.

WinNT v4, on the other hand, installed in less than 25 minutes.

I suspect the reason might be because win95's installer is not 32-bit whereas winnt's installer is 32-bit.

What do you guys think?

Also, NT4 is faster overall than 95.

I'm going to install 98 next and see what gives.

NOTE : I can't install Win2000 on Qemu as it runs out of disk space halfway although I have requested a 10Gb virtual disk. I suspect the installer or win2k kernel differ from winnt and winxp. Also, Qemu does not have a profile for Win2k or WinME.

[The_Librarian]

It's my fault... isn't it

No, you merely accelerated the process

I always wanted to do virtualization, but lacked the motivation

Now that there's a couple of ppl doing it, I'm feeling motivated

[The_Techie]

I run Windows Vista on Virtual PC when needed

[The_Librarian]

I run Windows Vista on Virtual PC when needed

What is the host machine specs?

How is Vista in a VM? Snappy/sluggish?

[chiskop]

I use Virtualbox - mostly xp guest on an ubuntu host, but also to try out other distros. To be fair, I haven't tried other VMs, virtualbox just worked.

[The_Librarian]

@ chiskop - can virtualbox handle images from qemu?

* Q: How does VirtualBox relate to QEMU? I have seen some source files that appear to be related to his project.

A: VirtualBox makes use of QEMU in two ways: first of all, some of our virtual hardware devices have their origin in the QEMU project. We have found them to be very useful and took them as a starting point. Secondly, we have incorporated the recompiler of QEMU as a fallback mechanism for situations where our Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) cannot correctly handle a certain situation. This holds true for guest code that executes in real mode (such as bootup) and some rare scenarios at runtime. See VirtualBox architecture for details. QEMU saved us a lot of work and we are very grateful to be able to rely on it.

Nice, but it doesn't answer my question :/

Only thing to do is to try

[Telkomisaloser]

The one thing what I would really like to have on my VM is internet

How do I set up internet on a win 98 VM?

[The_Techie]

What is the host machine specs?

How is Vista in a VM? Snappy/sluggish?

Core2Duo E6550, 2GB DDR2-667, 7800GT. Vista is a bit sluggish on it, though, might install it on a partition and get it over with

[Asha'man X]

@ The_Librarian

I have played with VirtualBox quite a bit, and I know that with version 1.5.0 that I use it can read it's own image and VMWare images. No mention of QEMU images unfortunately. I must download 1.5.4 when I get the chance.

I suggest you try installing Windows 95 and so in there, it should run quite quickly. Then again it may crash, since you can't "reduce" your CPU's speed or type, and Windows 95 has no clue of what's going on. Maybe try BOCHS emulator?

@ Ninja, what program are you using to host your virtual machines?

[The_Librarian]

Interesting observation.

1. Install Win95 with task manager open to see CPU and kernel usage - CPU was 100% and kernel usage varied between 60% to 90% for the duration of the install.

2. Install Win98SE with task manager also open to see CPU and kernel usage - CPU hits 100% for the duration of the install, and (surprise, surprise) kernel usage is between 5% and 15%

[Telkomisaloser]

@ Ninja, what program are you using to host your virtual machines?

Virtualbox

[The_Librarian]

/me will give virtualbox a go and see if it's better than qemu

[Highflyer_GP]

I'm using VMWare Workstation and Win98 runs lightning quick for me.

Win2003 Server on the other hand