[CentOS] virtualization on the desktop a myth, or a reality?

[Lamar Owen]

On Thursday, March 03, 2011 03:55:48 pm Les Mikesell wrote:
> But you can usually run the one that is picky as the host OS and the 
> other(s) virtualized.  

You really don't know what you're talking about in this case, Les.  The specific machine that I'm talking about needs access to Harrison Mixbus on OS X with iZotope Alloy, Ozone, and Spectron as AudioUnits, and also access to Ardour (soon Mixbus, once I get some things squared) on Linux with certain specialized LV2 plugins for special tasks.  Both environments are time critical.  There is also clock sync to outboard processing gear; I'm talking realtime on both OS'es, and virtualization is not a workable option, at least as long as hard realtime under a VM isn't possible.  If the iZotope plugins would work as VST's under Linux in a reliable manner I could remove at least part of my need for OS X; well, and once Melodyne for Windows can run under Crossover (haven't tried; don't know).  But I still do analysis in Spectre, and that's OS X-only.

> Or set up for dual boot, but give your virtual 
> machine direct access to the partition (VMware can do this - not sure 
> about the others).  Then you only have to boot into the other OS when 
> you need to run the specific app that doesn't work well in a VM.

Again, there are apps on both systems that are needed, and they need to share rather large audio files (multiple tracks of 32-bit floating point audio for many minutes means a number of GB per session).  And due to outboard processing, clock sync is a must; in the future, SMPTE timecode will be part of that.  And since the workflow between the two operating systems *is* serializable, dual boot is workflow-friendly in this environment, where you might be charging a client significant amounts per hour of time.  And it wasn't too awfully hard to set up.

And OS X running in VMware Workstation under Linux is rather difficult to do, using direct partition access.  Linux/CentOS on VMware Fusion works great, but VMware's timekeeping isn't.

> As long as you have access to a network, just connect up a common 
> nfs/samba share from some other machine.

No.  That specific machine is not networked, to reduce IRQ load.  Every IRQ that can be turned off is turned off.