Virtualization

[Jack]

First, I want to thank everyone for responding with
ideas and suggestion here.

[warning lengthy post]

I've installed kqemu and installed my first VM. I't
really quite fun. I went with kqemu, because it's got
the acceleration for qemu. Everyone out there who has
tested pretty much agree qemu is worthless without it.
I am running on a Intel Centrino  Core Duo T5300, not
VT extensions so kvm is out (damn). This Intel
replaces my old Dual Core Athlon64 which did have kvm
support. FYI, for those using Intels, just having the
right cpu isn't enough, you have to have the right
chi[pset and be able to enable VT support from the
BIOS. So HP laptops with Intel are going to be mostly
out.

I plan on testing this one out for a few weeks,
install KDE4 in it, and play some more. Install
Windows in it and play briefly (I don't want to leave
a 20GB file on my drive for too long).

Then I'm going to remove kqemu and install vmware.
Rinse and repeat with some of the others.

So far, here's my take. It's a bit slow starting up,
but once up it seems to be not too bad. The Mint
installer has a bit of a flaky screen when going from
text mode to X, but once it gets over that it displays
fine. I also installed the graphical front-end to
manage qemu. It has a bug in it. It has an option to
create the image files to hold the VM, but it doesn't
do it right. I had to open a console and use the
command-line tool. Once that was done the gui tool
worked fine. Next step setting up networking with it.

This looks like a really useful tool for a testbed.
You could back up your entire VM by simply copying the
file when it isn't running. Launch you VM and not have
to worry about trashing your system. Very cool.

Set up was a breeze, just apt-get install. But I had
to compile kqemu. I think I'll also have to add a
startup script to create the /dev/kqemu device and
modify the boot modules list.

Thanks,
Brian