VM recommendations (Again, different needs now)
 

I currently have VirtualBox installed, and it handles my usb nicely, kinda. The major issue is that I can't use the soundcards mic port (It's a VirtualBox thing, well known, and won't be fixed. Sun says "Mic isn't needed for business apps")

My question is: What VM that handles USB devices like VB, AND has good sound support?

I've always been a happy QEMU user. It has good sound support, supports USB and if you have a modern CPU with hardware virtualization support, you should install kvm (it comes with a slightly modified QEMU) to get decent speeds in the VM.

Eric

When you say "supports usb", I need a little more info.

Does it recognize usb devices that Linux does not? I have a webcam that doesn't work in the newer kernels. It does work fine in a XP guest in VirtualBox.

And I'm assuming you have the SlackBuilds on your site for 13?

QEMU has a usb-passthrough mode that makes your USB device directly available to the guest inside the VM. This is what you need for that webcam.

To be honest, I have not been building QEMU packages for Slackware 13.0 yet. No idea why... I guess I'll have to create some soon.

Eric

Can the 12 series ones be modified for 13?

I mean the SlackBuilds scripts

How well does Qemu/KVM comapre to Virtualbox for graphics and such support? I mainly want to install other systems to learn the command and differences, but I have a high res display, and would like the virtual machines to run at least by 1280x1024, which I understand is not a problem in virtualbox. From what I have been reading, Qemu/KVM suffers in this regard.

There's a qemu-kvm package in the pending queue at SlackBuilds. It should be posted soon.

Modified the qemu.Slackbuild script from your site, Eric.

Made the following changes:

• Added the bin/sh command on first line.
• Changed version number to match source.
• Changed arch for my 64 bit
• Changed the makepkg command at from "makepkg" to "/sbin/makepkg" (I don't su to root, I sudo).

I think that's all I did...Wouldn't be the first time I've done too much, or not enough...lol

Compiled, installed ok, I guess..Trying to install XP now...VERY SLOWLY...lol

Let you know

I tried qemu with kqemu as well. It took about an hour and a half to install Slack. My proc is an Intel q6600.

How was qemu with graphics support? How would you compare it to virtualbox? What about Xen?

Never tried Xen, and gave up because of speed on qemu. (XP32 took over 2 hours to get to "32 minutes left" on the install (Clock starts at 40). I'm too old to wait that long.

I think I'll stick with VB for now. I've resolved all my issues w/SW13/64, got all my hardware working right. So while I don't NEED a VM now, I'm impressed with the speed and stability of VB.

I might use it as a 'sandbox' for Slackware now.

Nobody mentioned vmware; don't know about your particular hardware, but I suspect it might be supported - worth a try anyway.

VMWare is without a doubt the very best, and most polished. I say this having only used Virtualbox and VMware..., but really, VMWare is rather marvelous.

I am interested in playing around with kvm/qemu.

I would like to know the following things, if someone could let me know:

1. Does it ship with Slackware64? I could not find a reference to it in PACKAGES.TXT. Perhaps the module is there, but not the software? Exactly which software is needed?(The guides I have found have all been rather outdated in this regard).

2. How is the graphics support? I have seen many problems of it being too slow. I have a core 2 duo with virtualisation support, so this should not be an issue. I read however that it still actually emulates hardware, such as graphics cards, so it can be really quite slow. No hope of have a 1280x1024 qemu machine then?

3. Is it possible to use a kvm virtual machine without having started X? To just run the commands and boot into a text only virtual machine? Or to start X from within the virtual machine even if X is not running on the host?

Have you ever installed VMWare on Slackware? I've never been able to get it to work. Also, it's not free. :(

It is available on http://www.slackbuilds.org

Well, VMWare Server actually is free from a cost perspective but it isn't an open source project. And it does run on Slackware quite nicely. The catch is that if you use VMWare Server 2, you'll need to install PAM since it is uses the PAM libraries. You don't have to modify Slackware at all, you just have to have PAM software installed.