On 3/2/2011 11:29 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
So, I installed CentOS + KDE, chose the Virtualization package and used Virtual Machine Manager to setup another CentOS VM inside CentOS (I only have a CentOS ISO on this SAN, since we don't use Debian / Slackware / FC / Ubuntu / etc). The installation was probably about the same speed as it would be on raw hardware. But, using the interface is painfully slow. I opened up Firefox and browsed the web a bit. The mouse cursor lagged a bit and whenever I loaded a slow / large website, it seemed asif the whole VM lagged behind.
X without hardware acceleration is pretty ugly - you end up making the CPU do block moves even for simple things like screen scroling. Not sure how how the virtual interface works, but a better approach is either running X natively on your local hardware with the desktop/app remote (if you are on a low latency LAN) or freenx on the server and the NX client locally (works regardless of the connection speed).
And, granted, when we install Virtual Machines on a XEN server, we don't ever use X since the servers we run as web / email / database / file servers, so there's no need for X.
Xen seems to be on its way out.
BUT, I want(ed) to see if this is a reality for the average desktop user, or not really (yet?) seeing as most modern PC's have far more CPU& RAM resources than what is actually needed by most. I'm not talking about developers / graphic designers / etc. I'm talking about Bob, who uses his PC for email, internet, document writing, etc and needs to boot into Windows if he feels like playing Warcraft III or StarCraft II, or use Pastel, etc.
If you have paid for a windows license and/or want to run games, why wouldn't you run Windows natively, with the NX client to access remote linux desktops, or VMware Player to run it locally.
Wouldn't it be nice to run Windows, of for that matter Solaris / FreeBSD / MAC (graphics designer) / another flavor of Linux / etc inside your favorite Linux, and access it from the Desktop without too much trouble?
Yes, as a matter of fact, it is nice - but it doesn't really make much difference which is the host and which is the guest, or for most things whether you run locally or remotely. For most things, I find floating a running Linux desktop around among NX clients to be extremely handy. And, if you want a local VM, it is possible to set a dual-boot system up so you also have a choice of running the currently-inactive partition under vmware player without rebooting.