James D Andrews wrote:
> Paul snuck on to your hard drive to scribble:
>> James D Andrews wrote:
>>> Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn't try Linux...
>>>
>>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/why...45?tag=nl.e539
>>>
>>
>> That guy is wrong.
>>
>> Who knew ?
>>
>> Of course you can try Linux, and if you load VirtualBox and install it
>> in there, it can run in parallel with your Windows system. You can
>> dabble in the VirtualBox and if you get tired of it, shut it down.
>> You can use your Windows browser, to do searches on Linux fixes,
>> then reach over to the VirtualBox session, and implement them.
>>
>> I use VirtualPC 2007 (it performs the same function as VirtualBox),
>> and it's much rougher around the edges, and tend to break Linux
>> installs (XWindows tends not to work, out of the box). But that's
>> all part of the challenge for me. That's because the emulation
>> support in VPC2007 was strategically designed to only support
>> Windows guest OSes well, while other guest OSes can "suck it".
>>
>> Paul
>
> I kind of figured the guy might be blowing smoke about stuff. ZDNet has
> some great stuff, but sometimes I think they carry stuff that's there
> just to get a reaction. I know of at least once instance(and I bet
> there's more) where they had to do a follow-up article to correct
> inaccurate reports.
>
> Since my backup/test comp died and I won't have the money to fix it
> until after the end of the year, I guess I'll be waiting to fiddle away
> on Linux for a few months. I've got the latest Ubuntu releases and
> access to most other releases once I'm back in the water. Gives me time
> I hope I'll be able to learn a few things by then, too.
>
> I'll take a look at VirtualBox.
>
> As always, thanks for the input Paul.
>
If your computer is low on memory, or has a weak processor, then playing
with Virtual Machines might not be as much fun. If you have 2GB of memory,
that should be enough to try some stuff (give 1GB to VM, 1GB to Windows).
If you were trying to win a bar bet, you could probably experiment with
as little as 1GB total system memory, but then it's going to be like
"wearing a tight pair of shoes".
As far as the performance goes, the VMs now are pretty good, only wasting
about 10% CPU for themselves, leaving 90% for the application. If I run
the SuperPI benchmark inside a virtual machine, it runs at about 90% of
the performance level that I'd get within Windows itself.
If you want to play 3D games within a virtual machine, that doesn't work well.
But many other activities work well.
Years ago, with instruction emulation, the best you could hope for was
about 1/10th processor speed. Now, it's very close to the same speed
and is quite efficient. In the instruction emulation days, that was
dealing with running PC instructions on a Macintosh processor, or
PC instructions on a Sun Sparc processor, and that was quite a bit
slower. With the VMs now, you're generally running PC instructions
on a PC architecture, so there's no translation to do. Just ring0/ring3
protection to maintain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(computer_security)
VirtualBox has an option, to control how many cores get used
for the guest OS. The one I use, VPC2007 from Microsoft, supports
only one core, so even when the guest is running flat out, my dual
core system remains responsive. With VirtualBox, you can let the
guest use just about all the resources if needed.
Paul
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