On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've wanted to ask this for a while. I've never seen vmware running. > I'm curious about running a few Windows apps on my AMD64 machine, if > possible. Does stuff like sound work? I don't need any special > hardware. (I think) Just disk, graphics and network. > > How well does this work? vmware seems to have a good reputation. What > are the Open Source alternatives? > > If someone has a good pointer to something that walks a newbie through > setting this up and running Win XP then that would be cool. I have XP > licenses if necessary.
It's easy. If your CPU supports virtualization, make sure it is enabled in your BIOS settings and the virtual machine will run at nearly full speed (given sufficient RAM). Just emerge the version of your choice (I suggest using the vmware overlay fort this). I think vmware-server vmware-server-console are still free. If you don't use bleeding-edge kernels, it's even easier. VMWare is one of those closed-source programs with kernel modules that gets broken every time there's a new kernel released. Yes, I think sound and everything works in the free vmware-server except for hotplugging USB devices. In vmware-workstation (commercial product), plugging in USB devices work (so you can run itunes in vmware and sync your ipod to it, for example). There is VERY minimal directx/3D support but it's so bad it might as well not even exist. So it'll be a 2D-only windows box (no fancy gaming will happen). For alternatives there is VirtualBox, QEMU and a few kernel-based for making a virtualization server. I've not used those so I can't say anything about them.
