tlug: More praise for VMWare

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

I installed a 30-day evaluation copy of VMWare on a machine here today,
looking at it as a possible solution for people who need to use Windows for
business reasons but either want to or need to also run Linux and only have
one machine available. 

The test bed is a 300 MHz K6-2 with 128 meg and a 4 GB IBM SCSI disk.
Performance isn't screaming but doesn't stink either, and half of the memory
is given to the virtual machine.  Linux performance remains quite good, and
the VM running NT Workstation also delivers acceptable performance.  On a very
fast machine with even more memory, I would expect very good performance from
the VM.  

VMWare certainly lets you do some cool tricks - the VMWare directory in my
home directory on that machine is 1 GB.  It holds a container file, and inside
the container file is a complete NTFS file system.  My next experiment (as
time allows in this short-staffed week) will be to back up the VM container
file, delete it, and try restoring it.  If I get my NTFS back, I will be
really jazzed.  If not, well, it's a testbed machine, so reinstalls don't hurt
:-)

Of course, when the inevitable BSOD comes along, it won't take the whole
system down anymore - just do a quick restart of the virtual machine and
you're back in business.  And since the VM keeps Windows from touching any of
the actual hardware and can present carefully controlled hardware to it, I
find myself wondering if perhaps I will see better-than-native stability from
Windows here  :-)

The VMWare installer is also outstanding.  A Perl script does the basic
install, then the first time you run it a fully point-n-drool GUI walks you
through the rest of the setup.  Just taking the default setup and clicking
Next a few times worked perfectly for me.

I find that I must join the other TLUGgers who have tried VMWare in
recommending it to those who must, for whatever reason, run both Linux and
That Other OS on the same machine.  Run VMWare and say goodbye to dual-booting
forever.

<Note: if you have a preinstalled native Windows partition, it has to be on an
IDE disk to work with VMWare>.

It's cool enough that we might want to consider having them give a talk at
TLUG if anyone from VMWare should happen to be passing through Japan.

Jonathan Byrne                                   Engineering Division
Global Online Japan                              http://www.gol.com/
Tel:  +81 3-5334-1700   Fax: +81 3-5334-1701   Direct: +81 3-5334-1756


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