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Barx 02-09-2010 05:13 AM

Which is the best free virtual machine to run windows on slackware?
 
I know that there are lots of solutions, like Sun virtualbox, vmware, ecc ecc.

What's the best choice? I'm searching the best compromise between license, stability, features, speed ..

Thank you

Good bye

imitis 02-09-2010 05:29 AM

I never had a problem with virtualbox

tronayne 02-09-2010 06:25 AM

Sun's VirtualBox, in my experience, is fast, reliable, easy to configure and works just fine; you want the one from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads if you want USB support. I'm currently running the 32-bit and 64-bit versions on separate servers and both perform flawlessly.

VMware, also in my experience, is fast, reliable, a little less easy to configure and works just fine. You must install PAM first for the current version of VMware (not a big deal); get it from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam and build it with src2pkg.

In either case, you ought to have at least 2G RAM, preferably 4G (you need to allocate 1G or more to the virtual machine if you wan the thing to run reasonably). Winders is not a happy camper with 512M and your host will be limping too if you only have 1G total RAM.

Hope this helps some.

Mark Pettit 02-09-2010 06:38 AM

I think you'd be hard-pressed to beat Virtual Box.

You can try one of the VMWare incantations, but as an open-source proponent, I find
it distasteful.

There's Qemu, but it's not as fast (or flashy). Also I don't think the kernel module (kqemu)
is open - maybe it is now ?

With Virtual Box you can use the genuinely open source version, at the slight cost of not being
leading edge and some slight loss of functionality (I think for example USB ?).

The pre-compiled version that I use is brilliant - it just works (tm).

brianL 02-09-2010 08:10 AM

XP Pro's working perfectly (or as well as any M$ product can work) on VirtualBox (PUEL version) for me.

pokipoki08 02-09-2010 08:21 AM

VirtualBox

For speed enhancement, upgrade system memory and dedicate more to virtual guest. Another SATA controller helps too with virtual hdd speed. The latest VirtualBox version includes a direct sata controller capability in the guest OS.

AlleyTrotter 02-09-2010 10:57 AM

Qemu-KVM
 
Having used all of the above, I find Qemu-kvm to be the fastest (provided you processor supports it) when it comes to windows XP. I have a separate OS for my bride, because her bank only allows IE and she won't switch banks.
There is some command line work required, so if your not comfortable with that try one of the others

John

amiga32 02-09-2010 11:03 AM

I like KVM with qemu. I don't think you can get a definite answer on what's best, most fast or stable virtualization solution. I'm guessing they all have their pros and cons depending on the environment.

Barx 02-09-2010 11:06 AM

Thank you all for the hints

Ok, I'll try virtualbox .. My laptop has 2Gb RAM, I can work without USB, and I don't need to really work with windows. At the moment I only need to run windows sometimes for small tasks or tests, so I can deal with a not-too-fast windows virtual machine.

But this can be a great opportunity to start to play and learn virtualbox for a future production use, so I'm glad to use the 'best' solution

Bye all, thank you for replying

Slax-Dude 02-09-2010 02:20 PM

I use KVM (not qemu) and like it a lot!
Windows-xp and Windows-2003 run at native speed once I loaded the NIC and HD drivers.
For network I use VDE and a network-bridge. Windows VMs (or any VM for that matter) just get IP from my dhcp server and just appear as a normal (physical) machine on my network.

Get them all here:

KVM
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.0/system/kvm/

VDE
http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/vde/

windows NIC drivers for KVM
http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/tip...etwork-drivers

windows block-device (HD) drivers
http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/red...-block-drivers

amiga32 02-09-2010 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slax-Dude (Post 3858158)
I use KVM (not qemu)

How do you use KVM without qemu?

gargamel 02-09-2010 06:29 PM

Haven't tried KVM myself, but it has a good reputation. From my own experience I can confirm that VirtualBox is a good choice: Much easier to install and set up than VMware, comfortable, fast and reliable. Plus, excellent support on the newsgroup.

And VirtualBox is available in about three flavours.

1. OSE - Open Source Edition. You can compile it yourself, if you wish. I did it in the past, it's easy, but it lacks a couple of features of the non-OSEs.

2. Binary
The binary you can download from Innotek/Sun can easily be installed on Slackware. In fact, the install script was modified within two hours after I sent a bug report several years ago (!), in order to make it work on Slackware.
The license is about the most liberal non-open-source license I know of. You can use it even in a company for commercial purposes, if it is not a large enterprise with hundreds of systems. I recommend this one. It has support for a little more hardware than the OSE. As far as I recall, the OSE doesn't support USB printing (but it does support, of course, USB disk drives), but I am not sure.

3. Enterprise
This is for use in large enterprise networks, server farms and data centres, and comes with a commercial license.


VMware has even more features, but they are relevant only in large-scale enterprise scenarios. A nice feature is, however, that there is a "player", that allows you to use a VMware image, even if you don't have a VMware license yourself. Someone can give you a CD with a virtual system on it, and you can run it just useing the player, without a license or full version of VMware. Sorry, I don't recall the name of this feature, currently, but it works quite well...

So, if all you want to do is to run Windows 7, then VirtualBox would be my recommendation, but if you want more in the foreseeable future, VMware is certainly worth a second view.

gargamel

mostlyharmless 02-10-2010 09:35 AM

VMware ver 1.0.10 (the latest security update to the previous version) runs Windows XP a bit faster than Vbox, in my experience and runs out of the box, no PAM installation needed, even with the speed enhancement suggestions mentioned above. Don't know about the "easier installation" comments above, both programs are equally very easy to install.

It isn't open source of course, but it is free, so IMO a better program than VBox binary. I've never had it crash or had it crash Slackware, which is unfortunately not the case with Vbox. I can't remember the particulars, I think it had to do with "seamless mode", which was actually one reason I was trying the program, as VMware does not have that capability. I had a few other hardware problems/nonfunctionality with Vbox too (yes even the binary version). Running something other than XP, like an older version of Slackware, for example, I've had much better luck with VMware.

Vbox OSE has the USB issues mentioned above, so I suppose there's a trade off between wanting open source and wanting USB compatibity. Besides, it strikes me as "crippleware", but I'm sure there's a more charitable reason the OSE doesn't support USB.

I've tried Qemu, but not recently. Perhaps it's come a long way, configuration and networking used to be difficult. A lot of people here seem to like it. My older machine doesn't support KVM.

hitest 02-10-2010 09:59 AM

I ran XP Pro in Qemu on Slackware, it worked properly. :)

mcnalu 02-10-2010 10:06 AM

Virtualbox open source edition (OSE) has served me very well, even on relatively limited hardware i.e. intel atom with 1Gb memory!

disturbed1 02-10-2010 09:58 PM

Just an opinion - but it's hard to beat VMWare Player for virtualizing Windows. VMWare Player is free (in cost) as is the OS tools. For Windows installations, it is automatic. Give VMWare Player the user name, and CD Key, everything else is done automaticially. Drives partitioned, user account created, OS tools installed, virtual machine rebooted. USB support is plug and play, no need to modify /etc/fstab or fdi files, or user permissions like with Virtual Box. We test a few NLite isos, Bart/WinPE setups, and disaster recovery sets - VMWare Player makes this quick and simple - no need to watch an installation screen prompting you for questions. Video acceleration in Windows is quite good as well. My girlfriend can at lest play Bejeweled Delux in full screen ;)

For Linux Distros I use KVM. KVM performs better on Linux hosts with Linux guests compared to VMWare. It's the oppisite with Windows. I experience slower drive access in Windows guests hosted by KVM compared to VMWare - even with the virtio drivers in use.

Gave up on Virtual Box some time ago. Perhaps it's better now? I do recall performance being a serious bottleneck with VBox compared to KVM and VMWare. It's VRDP server being buggy, random VM crashes. All from the OSE, non-OSE and compiled from source releases. Support will have you disable ACPI, then SMP, then disable Video acceleration, then disable VT-x/AMD-V - why not just run KQemeu. That's something I can say about KVM and VMWare, I've never had a VM crash, nor lock up with either of these systems.

veeall 02-10-2010 11:52 PM

Do you, guys, get responsive graphics with windows in KVM with qemu, as interacting with menus and apps was slower in qemu than in virtualbox when i last checked qemu few years ago?

disturbed1 02-11-2010 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veeall (Post 3859981)
Do you, guys, get responsive graphics with windows in KVM with qemu, as interacting with menus and apps was slower in qemu than in virtualbox when i last checked qemu few years ago?

Which Guest OS/Driver?

You can use std, cirrus, vmware, xenfb, none. In Windows I've had to use 16bit color depth for the best response, not much difference between std and cirrus. The cirrus driver works fine for me in Linux.
Place this in your /etc/xorg.conf on the guest system to get a display larger than 800x600. The emulated cirrus graphics card does not support edid scanning, so Xorg falls back on a safe 800x600 resolution.
Code:

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier  "Monitor0"
  HorizSync  20.0 - 50.0
  VertRefresh 40.0 - 80.0
End Section


Section "Screen"
  Identifier  "Screen0"
  Device      "Device0"
  Monitor      "Monitor0"
  DefaultDepth 16
  Subsection "Display"
    Depth 16
    Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"
  EndSubsection
EndSection

You can use vnc, which it what I normally do.
Code:

qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu host -net user -net nic,model=rtl8139 -drive file=xp,if=virtio,index=0,media=disk,boot=on -smp 2 -m 2048 -usb -usbdevice tablet -soundhw sb16 -no-acpi -boot menu=on -vnc :1

dc_eros 02-11-2010 07:13 PM

I also used VirtualBox to run Windows XP on my laptop. I get it from SlackBuilds.org, works well but I didn't use Windows too often at home since I'm busy with Slackware stuff. I use it for testing multiple IE versions for web development. So far, it works fine.

rpedrica 02-12-2010 12:51 AM

I'm a long time VBox user and I"ve sen it mature into a very good product. The only issue I have in 3.1.x is that my seamless mode doesn't work properly ... Apart from that, it's CLI ability is one of it's best features.

gauchao 03-15-2010 05:08 PM

On the time being, which would you prefer to run windows xp under slack 13 64 bit?

slowpoke 03-15-2010 09:36 PM

I use Slack64 to run Vbox because I have a lot of ram and it enables me to give xp 3 gigs.
A stock 32 bit system will only recognize a total of 3 gigs and therefore much less to be assigned to the guest.

trxdraxon 03-16-2010 12:54 AM

I've never had any problems with with virtualbox or kvm/qemu. I run vbox on my 64-current desktop and kvm/qemu on my server which is running slack64. I like kvm/qemu for all my headless VM's.

matze525 03-16-2010 04:55 AM

I run VirtualBox on PIII 800Mhz SMP :) works very well and XP is useable on slackware with opengl accelration and experimental DirectX support.

Linux.tar.gz 03-17-2010 12:17 PM

Qemu-kvm literally crushes any actual virtualization program on any platform, except for usb and 3d stuff.

gnrsu 12-11-2012 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barx (Post 3857667)
I know that there are lots of solutions, like Sun virtualbox, vmware, ecc ecc.

What's the best choice? I'm searching the best compromise between license, stability, features, speed ..

Thank you

Good bye

the free one, i will say virtualbox is the best, as for the commercial one, vmware is!

here is a related article about virtualbox!!!!

http://appnee.com/virtualbox/

sycamorex 12-11-2012 03:18 AM

I have been using VirtualBox on Slackware for the last 4 years or so. I haven't experienced any freezes.

fotoguy 12-11-2012 03:44 AM

I've really new to the virtualization thing, dabbled here and there over the last couple of years, but nothing of any real use. Just started using virtualbox and it seems to be stable, I haven't used VMware so I couldn't say what it's like. I think the only problem with virtualbox is running games, it doesn't handle 3d acceleration, if it's only for non game software, you should be fine.

guanx 12-11-2012 04:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by imitis (Post 3857671)
I never had a problem with virtualbox

When I use VirtualBox and choose the qcow2 disk format, formatting the partition takes forever and my host disk io is at full load.

Using VirtualBox'es native disk format causes no problem.

commandlinegamer 12-11-2012 04:17 AM

Virtualbox here also. Server machine it runs on is Athlon-64 3400, 1 GB DDR with Slack 13.37. 384 MB RAM, 20 GB disk partition allocated for virtual machine (only runs accounting software). Solid as a rock. Only problem I have is remembering to shut down XP first; heh.


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