Advice for virtualisation software

[Calubuntu]

Hi there,

I am looking for some advice on virtualisation software. The only two I know of are Virtualbox from Oracle and the products from VMware. I will now first explain my situation.

Momentarily I am dual-booting with Kubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7 (both 64 bit). Although this works neatly, I consider it to be a hassle to have to restart my laptop each time I want to switch to the other OS. To avoid this, I started to experiment with Wine. I got to the point where I installed iTunes, however it looked crappy when loaded and was totally unusable. There is no doubt that I did something wrong, but one can argue that even though you get it to work, it is always a mystery whether everything will continue to work after a Wine update or other software updates. Also you need to check for each application if the software is compatible with the installed version of Wine.

This eventually brought me to Virtual Machines. However there are many different kind of software providing virtual machine capabilities. I would like to know how well these virtualisation software perform, from someone who actually has some experience with them (perhaps using it every day). I want to use the VM to run applications for personal use only (Microsoft Office, iTunes and games). Especially when it comes to games, I really wonder how well the virtual machine will perform. Will the experience be as good as running Windows in the normal way?

Many thanks!

ps: Feel free to suggest other VM software besides Virtualbox and VMware

[ronw]

I run Windows XP and 7 in Virtualbox VMs for testing, for Citrix junk that is Windows only, and for certain presentations (clients want to see stuff run in IE). I also have Win7 available to dual boot. My experience is that you can't tell the difference between the Virtualbox VMs and native hardware if you can give the VMs enough RAM. 1GB for XP, and 1.5GB for Win7. These are basic business applications; don't care about Aero or other eye candy. I'm sure gaming and other video intensive applications would be different.

[Frank616]

Calubuntu:

I quit dual booting many years ago for the very issues you mention. Though I now use WINE to run the one remaining Windows app that I still need, I have used VMWare Player to run Windows on an otherwise 100% Kubuntu machine. The product is free for personal use, and on a multicore machine, Windows runs at near-native speed. VMWare Player has a 'unity' mode that makes the hosted Windows app look and behave like a native Linux app.

While WINE works for some apps, for true compatibility, you can't beat running them in a Windows VM. MS Office and iTunes will be a breeze, as they put little load on the hardware, though I also switched to Open Office / Libre Office and have therefore avoided any need or desire to run MS Office. iTunes still has no real Linux equivalent, and Apple works hard to keep it that way.

Now, games may be another issue. They work your machine pretty hard, and there is still SOME overhead in running a VM on Linux. The best way to find out if this will work for you is to try it. It won't cost you anything other than the time to set it up.

Frank.

[SecretCode]

I have a dual boot setup but I hardly ever boot the windows partition - I use virtualbox with various VMs (most commonly Windows 7) if I need windows stuff.

Aero transparency doesn't work on my setup but that's no big deal. Additionally I've had some problems with accessing Microsoft VPNs which meant I had to fiddle with the virtual networking setup. Both virtualbox and vmware have quite extensive configuration possibilities for their networking.

[Calubuntu]

Thank you all for your helpful replies.

It is nice to hear that using a VM closely resembles running Windows natively. Giving the VM sufficient RAM will not be a problem as I have 8 GB installed. I have now created a VDI disk with VirtualBox. I have given it 100 GB of diskspace and 4 GB of RAM. Somewhere this week I will install Windows 7 (64 bit) on that disk.

As I said before I will only use this virtual machine for MS Office, iTunes and games. To be more specific on the games, I will only be using it for StarCraft II and Diablo III. I mostly use LaTeX for my reports, however once in while when I work in a group I need MS Office as all the other use MS Office and things start to break when using multiple software for the same document.

I am confident now that the VM will work perfectly for MS Office and iTunes. However does someone have any experience of gaming within a virtual machine?

[SteveRiley]

However does someone have any experience of gaming within a virtual machine?

You might experience some sketchiness with accelerated graphics. Depending on your combination of hardware, kernel modules, X drivers, virtualization stack, and virtualized graphics drivers, your experience could be plus or minus.