duncan wrote:
> Steve,
>
> I'm about to install it.
>
> Looks like it is similar to bochs www.bochs.com but further advanced and
> $300
>
> For that sort of money it better be good. I'm going to install bochs too
> and see if I can save some dollars.
>
> Dunc
>
I've been doddering about with VMWare for a while now, and I really like it!
Sometime it is not expedient to arrange your computer for a dual-boot
situation, and that's where VM-Ware comes in extremely handy. For what it's
worth, here's a few of my thoughts and feelings about it:
I'm using my Linux box as a mission-critical monitoring tool at work, as well
as a workstation. Luckily it's quite a high-end machine, PII-350 with 128Mb's
RAM and a 6 Gig HDD, so there's plenty of powder to spare. I'm also runing
Accellerated X, so it's a really nice machine to work with. My monitoring
software consists of shellscripts that uses SNMP to monitor all our routers
and client connections, and then SMS the technical team to their mobile
phones in the event of a line-down situation. This is a nice way of doing
things, since it is scalable and doesn't take much to extend it. However,
dual-booting is a total no-no in this situation. Enters BOCHS and VMWare!
BOCHS is a really nice PC emulator, but apart from being a bit "cryptic" to
get going, it only emulates an i386 machine. This can be a bit of a bind if
you want to run WinNT on it, and it totally rules out Win98 (98 needs at
least an i486). NT has a lot of performance enhancements if it runs on a 486
and upwards, making it "almost nice" to run. Win95 is a bitch, no matter how
you look at it, so I was glad to get my hairy paws on VMWare. I immediately
installed it with Win98, and almost immediately wiped 98 and installed NT
instead. NT, due to it's non-P&P nature, works much better in VMWare, and is
faster than 98 in that environment than 98 by almost a factor of 4. The only
gripe I have is that the built-in sound breaks every now and then, but that's
not really a concern to me. The fact is that NT is as rock solid (well,
almost!) under VMWare than it is on it's own, actually even more so since the
host OS is Linux. I like the bridged networking idea, and the ability to give
your virtual machine it's own IP address. Freaky!
Since installing NT (for various reasons) on my Linux box, I've played around
a bit with it on my machine at home (an oldish P5-200 MMX with only 64Mb's
RAM) with equal success, but obviously not as fast as on my work box. The
fact is that VMWare, Beta or not, is extremely stable, quite a feat for a
Beta release. The only OS that I could not get to install under VMWare (of
all the Intel based OS's that I could lay my hands on) is OS/2 Warp 3, Warp 4
not being available. All the rest, ranging from BEOS to Solaris Intel to
FreeBSD runs very nicely indeed. I even had a try-out session of the newest
Slacware under VMWare (and of course just reinforced my resolve to stay with
Mandrake) with success.
Where VMWare comes in very handy indeed in the corporate environment is when
network software for specific platforms are being tested (like HP Openview
for NT) in an operating climate. It saves a lot of money and unneccessary
hardware purchases if all you want is to test out a concept or product.
Unfortunately VMWare will not be of infinitesimal value to gamers (as yet!),
since it doesn't support DirectX. I do believe that this is being addressed
by the VMWare team, so not all is lost!
For what it's worth, my verdict:
If all you need is to run the odd MS-Word (yechh!!!) session, slug it out
with BOCHS and put Win95 on your Linux box. For that it is more than just
adequate, and is still a better choice than WINE, at least for now. VMWare is
a serious product at what I think to be a reasonable price. $300 might sound
like a lot, but that can save you more than just a few shekels when the time
comes. It will be an absolute boon for developers, since you can have
multiple OS installations on your Linux box. Cross-developers will find this
a fantastic feature to have. As a network engineer I find it an invaluable
feature to be able to run HP Openview and Ciscoworks (both not ported to
Linux, yet!) while I'm excersizing my love and passion by pottering around in
Linux.
Thumbs up in a big way to VMWare as well as to the BOCHS team!
--
Regards,
Jan Henkins
CiTEC Technical Manager
