Do you use virtual machines on your computer?

[yoda313]

So do you use programs like Micorosfts Virtual PC or WINE or Virtualbox? I tried getting Virtual PC but I must be missing something like virtual server or whatever because its stuck on some dhcp look up. Anyway I got virtualbox and it works perfectly. I was able to install freedos on VISTA. I also got an old copy of Windows 98 and Windows 2000 working on Vista. Unfortunately the passthrough feature for internet access and cd/dvd use on windows 98 wasn't enabled on Virtualbox but Windows 2000 can use the net and the cd/dvd drives.

I like this ability to run full operating systems natively without dual booting. My final intention is to use this for gaming but so far am unable to figure out how to get nvidia drivers for the virtualbox program.

So have you fooled around with virtual machines like dosbox or the others mentioned above? IF so what are you likes and dislikes?

[gadgetguy]

Nope. Haven't really had a compelling reason to look into it. I had a customer once that wanted to use Virtual PC for an application I was to install, but as soon as he heard the application needed a dongle he dropped it.

[jagabo]

I use VMs for trying new software. Using MS Virtual PC 2007 (it's free) I keep a master virtual drive with a fresh XP install. I make a copy for testing. When I'm done I delete the copy.

I use DOSBox for playing a few old DOS games now and then. Just for the nostalgia really. I've also used Atari arcade game emulators, Nintendo 64 emulators (great way to play Legend of Zelda), PS2 emulators, even old Atari 800 emulators.

[freebird73717]

I do use wine when I'm booted into linux and I want to use a couple of my favorite windows apps. Although wine is not an emulator or a virtual machine.

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.

I can run windows programs on linux just as fast as they work in windows. That being said... I am trying to use native linux apps when running linux.

[IMoL]

Yes, I use VMs every day for work. The vast majority of the software I write for work is Windows only, but my main machines all run Ubuntu Linux. The software needs to be tested on all versions of Windows (except Vista) from XP, back through 2000 to even 98 and NT4! So I have Virtualbox environments for each one and I can test all environments from the same machine.

It's also very useful for testing client/server SQL data access from one virtual machine to another. At home I can do this from one physical machine to another, but on the road it means I can test this functionality all on my laptop. I couldn't live without it.

I've tried all the major players in this arena, and the best compromise of cost/features is IMO Virtualbox. VMWare runs great on a Linux host, but is slow on a Windows host, Parallels is the exact opposite, but VBox works great with all combinations of host and guest operating systems

IMoL

[disturbed1]

I used to use Virtual Box daily. Haven't had the need to for the past few weeks though

Seems like every year between Feb and April, I would spend more time in a Windows VM with Turbo Tax. Thankfully, this year Turbo Tax offered free online Federal E-File, and my State does the same. I'm the family accountant for some reason unbeknown to me, and family tech support, family counselor, and...............

As IMoL, I found Virtual Box to offer the best performance. VMWare always seemed slow compared to Virtual Box. For a single PC, small office, home setup, Virtual Box is the winner. In a cooperate setting, VMWare has the lead in advanced tools and support.

[FulciLives]

When running Linux Mint 4.0 I sometimes use VirtualBox to run WinXP Pro SP2 because some video stuff is easier/better in MS Windows than Linux and that's just the way it is *shrugs*

For instance I can't do without TMPGEnc DVD Author 3.x for one and then there are other tools I use that don't seem to work under Linux WINE such as DVD Rebuilder Pro etc.

I do some video stuff in Linux but not much. HCenc works fine under WINE as does FitCD and AviSynth so I sometimes do encoding that way and sometimes for "quick" stuff I'll use native Linux stuff like WinFF or QDVDAuthor or DeVeDe etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SingSing]

All the time and having tons of fun with MAME®, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

See : http://mamedev.org/about.html

Let personnel computer be fun again, not more work, and embrace Windows breakdown aka many coffee breaks.

[rumplestiltskin]

Yep; Parallels on OSX. Running W2K and XP VMs. Extremely happy.

[loster]

vmware server runs great w/many oses and its free

[JohnnyMalaria]

I use Virtual PC 2007 a lot, both 32- and 64-bit versions.

My primary use is to have clean installs of various Windows versions (XP Pro, XP x64, Vista 32 and 64 versions etc). I have created master copies of each virtual install and, when I need a clean install to test my software under development, I create a working copy. Once I've finished with it, I delete the working copy.

One nice feature of the 2007 version and Vista is that Vista's Windows Backup creates archives in .vhd format - i.e., the backup drives can be mounted in Virtual PC.

My only gripe is that I wish that IEEE-1394 interfaces on the host could be accessed in the same way as for USB.

[cd090580]

Yes, I use VM to test softwares. If they are OK, I install them on my working OS.

[Nitemare]

I use Virtual PV 2007 so that I don't have to buy new versions of programs.

My copy of Photoshop 4 (don't laugh) is paid for and I will not pay to upgrade until it's absolutely needed. (Used trials of newer versions and remian unimpressed) That said, it runs like crap on anything other than windows 98.

I have other programs that just run BETTER on windows '98.

[GMaq]

Hi,
Use Virtualbox to run XP from Linux, with Shared Folders, USB 2.0 support, DVD/CD Passthrough etc. it is about 98% as good as a dual boot.
In a dual core system with 1 gig RAM allocated to XP the performance is quite sufficient.

[lordsmurf]

Yes, daily. VPC and Parallels both.

Photoshop 4? Unimpressed? You must not do much. Photoshop 6 was a huge upgrade over the 4-5 series, and CS3 makes all previous versions look limited and useless. ACR4 alone is a leap in photo processing abilities.

[Vid-Kid]

I've tried Xen, KVM, VMWare, and Virtualbox. I found KVM quite unstable, very slow, and it's SMP feature didn't work. Xen was a nightmare to setup and often caused the host (Ubuntu 7.10 AMD64 on a Q6600 Quad Core + 4 GB memory) to crash. I really liked Virtualbox. Very fast and solid. However, it doesn't support SMP yet, and the developers don't seem to be be too anxious to add it. In the end, I went with VMWare. It wasn't as fast as Virtualbox, but it had all the featues that I wanted and is very stable.

[SCDVD]

Last month, Sun Microsystems acquired Innotek, the developer of Virtualbox. i hope that bodes well for the future of Virtualbox. Virtual machine support seems to be an important part of Sun's strategy.

[Nitemare]

Photoshop 4? Unimpressed? You must not do much. Photoshop 6 was a huge upgrade over the 4-5 series, and CS3 makes all previous versions look limited and useless. ACR4 alone is a leap in photo processing abilities.

You are correct... I don't use it for much. I mis-spoke... I should have said "for the cost of the upgrade, and for what I use it for, I didn't see the need to upgrade."

It wasn't my intention to bad-mouth Photoshop. I think Adobe makes great products, but not for my budget. I bought Photoshop 4 back when I was single. Now I'm the sole breadwinner in a family of 4 ... upgrading software to current versions was over for me years ago unless I had a VERY compelling reason/need to do so. For my limited usage the reason was never there.

Then PS4 ran like crap on XP, even with the patch. Virtual PC made it possible for me continue putting off the upgrade. (right back on topic... whew!)

Apologies to any Photoshop fans... I am one myself... in a limited kind of way.

[mats.hogberg]

Yes, with Ubuntu 7.10 as host OS, and Win XP as guest using VirtualBox.
Odd enough, with 512 MB RAM (of 1.5 GB) set aside for XP, it runs much faster and smoother than it ever did natively when I had only 512 MB.

/Mats

[Vid-Kid]

Last month, Sun Microsystems acquired Innotek, the developer of Virtualbox. i hope that bodes well for the future of Virtualbox. Virtual machine support seems to be an important part of Sun's strategy.

Yeah, I saw that too. What is interesting is that Sun is sponsoring Xen as well, along side AMD, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, SGI, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

If they combine Virtualbox and Xen, it could turn into some strong competition for VMWare.

[FulciLives]

Last month, Sun Microsystems acquired Innotek, the developer of Virtualbox. i hope that bodes well for the future of Virtualbox. Virtual machine support seems to be an important part of Sun's strategy.

Yeah, I saw that too. What is interesting is that Sun is sponsoring Xen as well, along side AMD, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, SGI, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

If they combine Virtualbox and Xen, it could turn into some strong competition for VMWare.

This news scares me ... it suggests that they could royally screw up VirtualBox which of course is (to date) an easy-to-use as pie program that just works.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Soopafresh]

I haven't found a compelling enough reason to run it. I've installed VMware several times in the past, but I always end up removing it after a few weeks of not clicking on the virtual machines.

[noki]

yes, used VMWare 5.xx in the past to run Premiere 6.5 in a Win2k environment where the host is WinXP. had to cuz Premiere would not load/run properly in th XP environ.

Since then removed VMW; reformatted HDD to run 2K. Now I might reload VMW to set up XP as a guest to run....newer stuff that will not run with anything less. Oh well....

[Video Head]

Last month, Sun Microsystems acquired Innotek, the developer of Virtualbox. i hope that bodes well for the future of Virtualbox. Virtual machine support seems to be an important part of Sun's strategy.

Yeah, I saw that too. What is interesting is that Sun is sponsoring Xen as well, along side AMD, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, SGI, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

If they combine Virtualbox and Xen, it could turn into some strong competition for VMWare.

Virtualization is all the talk in back-room IT right now. We could be going to something that looks like a mainframe running Wyse dumb terminals on the corporate desktop again. Interesting to see NetApp and Veritas in the list...

[lordsmurf]

Virtualization is all the talk in back-room IT right now.

It's so funny too.
I was using virtualization (and emulation) tech back in the early 1990s.

And I'm not even an "IT person".

[Vid-Kid]

We are starting to use them more and more in our lab environment. We have a half dozen boxes with 8 Dual Core CPUs and 64GB of memory in them that we split into 3 or 4 virtual servers using VMWare ESX. Once we are done, we just blow the virtual server away and create a clean image for whatever we are working on next.

The only downside of virtualization is that if you have a hardware problem, it impacts all the virtual servers.

[Video Head]

We are starting to use them more and more in our lab environment. We have a half dozen boxes with 8 Dual Core CPUs and 64GB of memory in them that we split into 3 or 4 virtual servers using VMWare ESX. Once we are done, we just blow the virtual server away and create a clean image for whatever we are working on next.

The only downside of virtualization is that if you have a hardware problem, it impacts all the virtual servers.

And users

[jimmalenko]

Yes, every day at work. All my servers are Windows 2003 R2 32-bit run on Microsoft Virtual Server, which is on a Windows 2003 64-bit master server. It makes testing (and migration) a piece of piss.

[yoda313]

Yes, every day at work. All my servers are Windows 2003 R2 32-bit run on Microsoft Virtual Server, which is on a Windows 2003 64-bit master server. It makes testing (and migration) a piece of piss.

Is microsoft virtual server what is needed to make virtual pc to work smoothly? I never got vp 2007 to go beyond a dhcp dos screen. That's why I went with virtualbox. I still have virtualpc installed. What version of virtual server works with vista home premium 32bit version?

[jimmalenko]

Yes, every day at work. All my servers are Windows 2003 R2 32-bit run on Microsoft Virtual Server, which is on a Windows 2003 64-bit master server. It makes testing (and migration) a piece of piss.

Is microsoft virtual server what is needed to make virtual pc to work smoothly? I never got vp 2007 to go beyond a dhcp dos screen. That's why I went with virtualbox. I still have virtualpc installed. What version of virtual server works with vista home premium 32bit version?

Nah, VirtualPC is like the cutdown consumer version of Microsoft Virtual Server AFAIK. You'll probably find that it is hardware issues causing your problems as the microsoft flavour tries to use generic drivers. Either that or you fooked up a setting somewhere.