Assistance / Suggestion / IMF

[jetgraphics]

I am seeking assistance, guidance and intel to determine if this is an Impossible Mission Farce.

The mission goal:
Phenom quad core, running Linux, with virtualization, to run guest Win XP.
Guest XP needs to access TV Tuner card (only WinXP drivers) and run BeyondTV application.
Act as a Video Server, streaming video on LAN, independent of BTV.
[] Is this possible?
[] Which would be a better app: Xen or KVM or [other]?

Other mission goal:
Another Phenom quad core, running Linux, with virtualization, to run guest XP, Linux, legacy OS.
Guest XP needs to have video hardware acceleration (video, animation, 3D drafting). Linux guest will run TikiWiki.
{Install Windows drivers for peripherals, too}
[] Is this possible?
[] Which would be a better app: Xen, KVM, Virtualbox or [other]?

TIA!

I desperately need to get my hardware off M$ and on Tux. But I am trapped by the lack of drivers for peripheral cards. (Dratted proprietary Windoze)
[] Can the Guest OS load the drivers and directly access the hardware?
[] Or is it limited by the Host OS?

TIA x 2 !

Other possible issues:
AMD 780G chipset
AMD Phenom 9600
[] Any known issues with Kubuntu?

TIA x 3

[oshunluvr]

Re: Assistance / Suggestion / IMF

[] Can the Guest OS load the drivers and directly access the hardware?

To my knowledge - virtualbox can do this with USB devices, but not bus hardware.

In vbox - 3D is coming, but experimental at this time.



What about one machine - XP, hosting all the unsupported hardware - streaming to linux boxes?

The lack of linux drivers is a manufacturers failure. Best you can do is complain to the producer about lack of support. In the future, buy linux supported hardware. there are tuner cards and apps that work great with linux.

[dibl]

Re: Assistance / Suggestion / IMF

No, some of those desirements are not going to work:

-- no direct access to TV Tuner card from the guest OS
-- no direct access to GPU either, severely limiting such applications as CAD drafting

I noticed that VMWare has a 3D video mode now, so you might get reasonable video in the guest for most things, but probably not CAD -- that's a very demanding application and needs the direct access to the hardware.

The guest OS should be able to access most peripherals (USB, parallel, or serial) -- you install the applicable driver on the guest OS, and let the VM have access to the interface.

[jetgraphics]

Re: Assistance / Suggestion / IMF

[] Can the Guest OS load the drivers and directly access the hardware?

What about one machine - XP, hosting all the unsupported hardware - streaming to linux boxes?

Thank you for the reply.

I currently am using the XP to stream to other computers. However, due to the "joys" of M$, the system needs periodic reboot. (Memory usage goes up and up, then performance lags, frame drops occur, and ... time to reboot). And the machine is only running BeyondTV and little else. (Quad Core + 4 drive RAID connected to 6 tuners.)

-- no direct access to TV Tuner card from the guest OS

That is unfortunate. I was hoping that the host would allow the guest OS to pass parameters to the peripheral device.

The lack of linux drivers is a manufacturers failure. Best you can do is complain to the producer about lack of support.

MythTV doesn't support SDTV for my Hauppauge Dual Tuner, so that wasn't solely the fault of the MFG.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Assistance / Suggestion / IMF

However, due to the "joys" of M$, the system needs periodic reboot.

Yes, well that's why we're here (at least in part) isn't it?

If you're only running specific hardware and limited functions with your XP box you might look into some of the windows utilities that let you build a stripped-down version of XP. There are a couple out there . They let you "build" a personal version of XP without a lot of crap that you don't need.

You might be able to get a more stable version of XP this way.

Another option - have a timed automatic reboot function to reset that computer at convenient times.