Ask Slashdot: Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner? 361
An anonymous reader writes "I am getting ready to start learning the use of virtual machines. What VM software would you recommend? This is for personal use. It would be good to run both Windows VMs and Linux VMs. Early use would be maintaining multiple Windows installs using only one desktop computer with plenty of cores and memory. I would be starting with a Windows host, but probably later switching to a Linux host after I learn more about it. Free is good, but reliability and ease of use are better. What is your preferred choice for a VM beginner? VMware? Xen? VirtualBox? Something else?"
It may also be helpful if you can recommend particular VM software for particular uses, or provide some insight on different hosting options.
VMware is very easy (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:VMware is very easy (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree. VirtualBox is not unstable. In fact, I think it is perfect for a beginner. It is free and if you grab Gentoo Linux, you would be learning a lot of just about everything. After you are done with VirtualBox you should really get into kernel hypervisors. That's about it. No vmware needed, or paying for software in the learning process.
Re:VMware is very easy (Score:4, Funny)
Gentoo? We want him to learn, not commit suicide!
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Ditto on the "unstable" part. We have a Rails webserver that usually runs on a server. Once in a while we need to demo this offsite or use it somewhere at a venue where the internet is flaky or expensive. Easy. Use a Linux VM, host on Windows. Youo click on the VM, it starts and it runs and browser goes to the VM instead of online.
With Oracle Virtual Box it was a disaster. Spontaneous reboots, slow, not responsive network. VMWare solved the problem instantly.
That said, I heard that Virtual Box runs better w
VMware and VBox seem slow. (Score:3)
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Hypervisor overhead has not really been a problem for five years or so. Baseline host tin these days is 24 threads/12 cores, 192 GB RAM, Dual port 10Gbe and dual 8Gbps FC or dual 10Gbps FCOE, and some SSD backed storage. It's the cost of that storage bandwidth that is holding things up now, and less so the network bandwidth - not CPU and RAM.
The surplus gear I use for test/dev is a few old boxes with dual X5550's and 96GB and quad gigabit. It sounds like you're trying to make do with some ancient P4 De
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Re:VMware and VBox seem slow. (Score:4, Interesting)
(To the OP)
VMware is easy to use and is free, as in beer. One of its strengths is that virtual disks can be moved about and that makes it easy to create virtual appliances. There're a ton of them out there on the net, mostly Linux distros tailored for a specific use. I've fooled around a bit with VBox and it's OK. Its performance is not on the same level with VMware. Or you could try Zen. Or attach electrodes to your feet like they did to Ham.
For me, as a desktop Linux user, VMware has been the mac-daddy killer app. There's not much reason to boot to Windows these days except for games, and I've found that what won't run under wine will usually run in VMware with a Windblows guest. Also, there were some kernel taint problem associated with VirtualBox that've been probably fixed by now.
On the other hand, if you're planning on running OS/2 in your guest, then Vbox is the only way to go! I learned that a couple of months ago.
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There is a third; portability. This is particularly true of Windows, which often doesn't play nicely when you move it to new hardware. Using the VM server as a hardware abstraction layer certainly costs some performance, but I can move guests from SATA to SCSI, Intel to AMD and the hardware is completely abstracted.
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I have a couple reasons that I use VMs.
#3 can be similar to #1 in the fact that it is crappy software, but I like doing Web browsing in a VM just because when I roll back to a snapshot, all changes/malware are gone. Especially if the Web browser is running as a user in the client OS. Yes, hypervisors can be penetrated, but it is a steep climb from user mode to admin rights, to punching through the hypervisor, to a useful context in the host machine. Not impossible, but a lot more difficult than running i
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Also kind of misses the point about VMs - they are hardware independent. If one of your old boxes dies you can just move the VM imagine to a new one, no need to to reinstall or reconfigure.
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Isn't it also very expensive?
I really know little aobut this area, and was only reading the thread hoping to learn something. Instead if seems to have been hacked since it is full of much more abuse than is typical for slashdot.
VMware player (Score:2)
Re:VMware player (Score:5, Informative)
The free hypervisor is here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html [vmware.com]
You'll need a license key, which you can also get (for free of course) on that website.
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Yes, this is far more abuse than is typical for /., but it's the Friday leading into a three day weekend in the US - Veterans Day - so many of us may be more drunk than usual.
All of the basic hypervisors are free, basically because kvm is free and included in Linux and the rest of them don't want to die.
The expensive parts are the management suites, advanced feature enablement, and support, none of which you need to get grounded in VM basics.
Re:VMware is very easy but (Score:5, Informative)
VMware tends to be fussy about the hardware. I had a non-descript Athlon dual core that ran VMware just fine but lacked horsepower and wa maxed out on RAM at 4GB. I decided to buy a 6 core Athlon, new motherboard and 16 GB of RAM. VMware installed just fine but the clock drifted all over the place (several seconds per minute). Finally gave up on VMware and went Xen. Xen worked just fine but lacked all of the nice management tools and virtual networking stuff that VMware had. SIGH.
Also, it will only install if you have a supported network card in your target box. Check the hardware requirements.
If you want to try VMware, there is a free version: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html [vmware.com]
Oh yeah, one other downside of VMware is the management console only runs on Windoze (at least when I was using it about a year or so ago). You will still need a separate, standalone Windows box
Cheers,
Dave
Re:VMware is very easy but (Score:4, Informative)
vSphere/ESXi is not the type of hypervisor he is seeking. It takes complete control over the hardware and it is picky on hardware, for an example it will not work with Realtek network cards. There is a HCL that you can refer to to get best results. I have built a whitebox ESXi hypervisor by replacing the network card on a desktop machine, and using a standard sata controller.
For what he's looking for, vmware-server or vmware-workstation is recommended as both run on top of an existing OS. I remember vmware-server being free, I'm not sure about vmware-workstation.
Re:VMware is very easy but (Score:4, Insightful)
They have VMplayer and now it allows you to create new VMs not just use appliances without jumping through hoops. It works well but no snapshots I don't think, you can obviously copy a VM manually. Workstation is good though if working with ESX as I swear you need an array of tools to get stuff to convert on it. Yeah I know about the standalone converter...
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VMWare Workstation 9 also has a web interface, though I havent had a chance to really mess with it. Its also substantially less expensive :)
Recommendation to OP: If you decide to pony up for VMWare workstation, you may be able to get an academic discount if you are in school. They make it pretty painless to order online.
Re:VMware is very easy (Score:4, Informative)
VMware is great. Though I've mostly used Virtualbox. For most personal uses VBox does things fairly well and is free. There are several other offerings out there. Try the free ones find one you like is what I'd recommend.
Re:VMware is very easy (Score:5, Informative)
Virtualbox is a nice entry hypervisor, and certainly if youre brand new start there.... but I wouldnt do anything production on it. I have had upgrades render VMs unusable, though with a downgrade and substantial effort I was able to restore them. Virtualbox has the basics, but it has its bugs. Using it for a few years before moving to Workstation will help you to appreciate when a hypervisor works correctly :)
Its also worth mentioning that if you go to Windows 8, you have Hyper-V, which I understand has started to suck a lot less in version 3.
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Really? You just used VMware? The predecessor for all of these? Well...OK then but please do not pretend to offer an informed opinion on VM software.
And why would that be? Only people having had experience with at least 6 different VM software are eligible for the discussion?
VMWare works right out of the box with no user manual even needed. That's already more than can be said for any of the competition.
Re:VMware is very easy (Score:4, Informative)
VMWare works right out of the box with no user manual even needed. That's already more than can be said for any of the competition.
Not so sure about that last sentence there.
I trained a new hire to use VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 12.04 box this week. He had just about zero experience with virtualization. Basically my instructions were to have installation ISOs for whatever OS he wants to run virtualized and to apt-get install virtualbox. He then set everything up on his own and only asked for help when it came to setting up a virtual network. I told him he should first figure out cloning. A few minutes later we were back on the virtual network. My own experience a couple of years ago was similar. In both cases, we had the manual handy, but never used it.
My proficiency with KVM/libvirt took more effort. But virt-manager makes it pretty straight-forward. Our KVM/libvirt virtualization system has several host nodes running a few dozen guests with storage on a SAN/NAS (it does both). This wasn't painful to do at all. An automatic backups/snapshot system has been more challenging, but that's mostly just because we want to minimize interruption of the guest (just suspend the guest, grab an LVM snapshot, wake the guest, copy the snapshot, free the snapshot) and due to our larger guests being about 200GB in size. Storing versions of files that large, and moving them around, requires delta compression. (Hint: Use xdelta3 before copying the data off-site.)
We also played with Proxmox a few months ago. A summer student had all of the above (except for backups) working in two days. Confusion over whether the licensing was really free, the fact that it is its own distribution (a double-edged sword for sure), and the fact that configuration of aggregate network links (LACP) was really goofy, all kept us from adopting it. Too bad, being able to switch a guest from one host to another in real-time while viewing the guest's display with only a tiny pause, was a really neat trick.
If I can do the above mixed in with all of my other responsibilities (as a school authority director of tech), anyone can.
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VMWare Player is free and doesn't even require that you sign up for a VMWare account like you used to. Why not try it?
Plus, as I recall, it's the only one that works properly with DirectX across all DX versions for Windows VMs.
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Try them all. Dedicate a day or so to each one with the goal of having a fully working linux vm and a fully working windows vm at the end of the day. Then you'll be able to write a slashvertisement about what you've learned and we'll all be better off. Take lots of pictures.
VirtualBox (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer VirtualBox myself, but also use VMware at work. I also recommend that you try them all. It's not a question of what is best for us, but rather what is best for you.
VirtualBox (Score:5, Informative)
VirtualBox is the best for a beginner. User-friendly GUI, sane defaults, it Just Works.
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Agreed. I tried helping someone that was using VMWare, and the options were more confusing.
The VMWare EULA is rather dodgy and it's very long. There's also a clause where they can set a third-party (like the BSA) on you.
VirtualBox is free software, no EULAs, works fine.
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The dichotomy is interesting -- the "don't ask questions, read multiple 500 page manuals, then make a half-baked decision and call yourself a genius for having done all that hard work" vs the parent. The original question was asked very humbly -- and was seeking real world advice -- what would you use if you were a newbie to virtualization? It wasn't "I'm an idiot, do it for me" as some previous posters asserted. It was a "hey you've been down this road, you know where the stupidities are, I'd like to
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I like that virtualbox is available on multiple platforms.. Makes it much more likely to "play" with things when I can do it anywhere. it is also very, very easy to export with other common formats.
VirtualBox Certainly (Score:5, Informative)
Virtualbox (Score:5, Informative)
Virtualbox is pretty reliable and includes acceleration on 64 bit systems along with an extremely simple to use GUI and easy to install guest additions that allow your display to easily scale. It's the one thing from Oracle that I actually use and recommend to others. For your requirements, it's licensed under the GPL v2 and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Re:Virtualbox (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently configured my first virtual host under VirtualBox to run LMDE, as my desktop Mint was behind the times on some packages I needed for a online course on big data. I didn't want to convert my main desktop to LMDE without some miles under my belt. There are many package management problems I can fix quickly enough, and just as many that leave me dead in the water. This was my "straw poll" installation.
I made a huge blunder allocating only 8GB for the system disk. I hit the disk full condition installing some small packages right after obtaining the latest Update Pack. There were package errors. Gnome keyring now constantly tells me about some missing directory. Related? Who knows. Once you've hit disk full, you're guessing until the end of eternity. The storage problem was due to 1.2GB of retained deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives. I ran a command line tool to increase the size of the disk image, but this didn't show up as extra disk space inside the OS.
Some package management command at the command line to gather a list of installed packages decided to spawn a GUI view window (I didn't expect this) which immediately punted my window manager, leaving my console windows tiny and immobile. Related? Who knows.
Overall it's been 98% pain free. The other nee Sun product I recommend is ZFS. I could really get into this snapshot business in a big way.
Re:Virtualbox (Score:4, Informative)
I ran a command line tool to increase the size of the disk image, but this didn't show up as extra disk space inside the OS.
Likely this only increased the size of the virtual disk, but not the partition that the OS lives on. Partition resizing is file-system-dependent as it requires understanding the FS layout. gparted can do the job if you boot from a live CD, but it'd be simpler to just start over since the OS is screwed up anyway.
BTW, VirtualBox defaults to dynamically sized disks that only take up as much physical space as is actually used by the guest OS. The allocation size is more of a maximum size, so you can safely set it higher than you think you'll need and not waste space.
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One gotcha with VirtualBox is that the open source version (as included with Ubuntu, for example) doesn't have USB support. You have to get the closed-source version directly from Oracle for that.
That had me seriously, as the one and only reason I'm using VirtualBox is because I need Windows for my e-banking, which uses a USB encryption device which only has Windows drivers... For the rest, indeed it just works. And that's exactly what I need.
Beginner? (Score:4, Informative)
VMware or VirtualBox (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you may be going cross platform at the host, either VMware or VirtualBox are good options. I've personally been using VirtualBox for a while and find it quite easy to use and being free is a nice perk too. Though I understand VMware Player(the free version of VMware) has grown in a a decent general purpose VM solution for simple desktop virtualization like it sounds like you'll be doing.
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QEMU would also be cross platform, even more so than those 2 you suggest.
OpenVZ (Score:3)
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He's using a Windows host machine. Also plans to use multiple Windows Guest VM's... OpenVZ doesn't work for either situation.
KVM is as bare metal you can get, but setup isn't always easy and requires a Linux Host. KVM is my personal preference but VirtualBox is probably best for his use case. VMware Workstation is great too but not free (last I checked - may have changed).
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OpenVZ is just a glorified chroot. It doesn't have a hypervisor.
We had one of these at my old work, running webservers for developers.
I discovered one day that some Debian scripts use killall to terminate their processes, can't recall if it was during uninstall or '/etc/init.d/script shutdown' but anyhow, what I found was that the process id's for all the processes running on the 'guests' are accessible on the host. I had to restart this process on all of the guests.
You can kill running processes in guests
Virtualbox (Score:2, Informative)
To start, virtualbox.
Its free, supports linux and windows and freebsd. (And Solaris!! Oh boy!!!) It's also easy to use and works well. For desktop use I'd choose it over whatever desktop product vmware is selling, even if I got it for free.
Microsoft has a free desktop visualization product too but it's documentation is sparse, and it has wierd limitations. It also pretty much only runs windows.
Vmware ESX is a damn nice piece of software, but it required dedicated hardware (hypervisor only! Local console is
VirtualBox or VM Workstation (Score:5, Informative)
It can run inside a host OS, so you don't need a bare metal install, and don't need a web interface to use it.
It has easy to install and operate clients in Windows and Linux (can't speak for Mac).
It can build VM's easily. (VMWare free options cannot create VM's)
If you are willing to spend a little money, the VMWare Workstation is more powerful and offers similar features to those above, but better resource management in general.
Re:VirtualBox or VM Workstation (Score:5, Informative)
Your knowledge of VMware is a bit out of date.
VMware player can create virtual machines (and has for some time) and it is still free. It works well on Windows and Linux hosts.
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Looks like since 2009 [switched.com], so three years.
Hyper-v in Windows 8 (Score:5, Informative)
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I use Hyper-V at work since I need to have a bunch of Windows VMs around. It's pretty nice. But I tried installing linux, either Fedora or Ubuntu, and it bombed out. Plus it ties you to Windows.
Since the poster mentioned possibly moving to a linux host in the future, and also mentioned wanting to run linux VMs, I'd rule Hyper-V right out of consideration.
I'd go with VirtualBox just on cost alone. If that doesn't suit your (poster's) needs, then you can shell out some money for VMWare.
Xen is not the way to g
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VirtualBox (Score:3)
I too recommend VirtualBox. I use it on my desktop Win 7 machine as well as my four year old notebook running Linux Mint. The fact that it's more-or-less free, and essentially identical on both platforms is a definite advantage. Thus far I've used it to play with various LInux distributions and FreeDOS/MS-DOS. I've even been messing with Windows 98 SE and OS/2 Warp lately, although they required a bit of head scratching to get running.
NOT VirtualBox (Score:5, Funny)
This negative comment was necessary to counterbalance the huge number of positive comments that are recommending VirtualBox. It's a yin-yang thing.
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I used to be one in '98 back when it was a way to let your Mac emulate Windows world under MacOS 8.
Its maker, Connectix never implemented USB support. MS didn't much care either after buying and rebranding it, several versions later.
Once we realized that VM's are the easy way to test multiple distros in a short time*, thanks to the KDE / Ubuntu GUI crazy-fest, VirtualBox provided the desired USB support.
I tried installing VPC2007 (or 2008?) recently and had trouble on my Windows 7 setup, and google searches
I agree and here's why (Score:3)
The D3D support in Virtualbox asplode every time I use it. It usually works in vmware.
Given a total lack of criteria, I will assume that they may want windows support, and so I'll suggest vmware every time.
If you only want to run Linux, virtualbox is probably fine.
If you choose vmware player, you should also install qemu so you can get access to its virtual disk management command. vmware player is missing such a tool (it is present in server) and qemu's is superior in any case.
What I started with (Score:2)
What do you mean by "learn"? (Score:2)
Learning "virtual machines" is kind of meaningless in and of itself, and unless you have a pressing need to become an expert in a specific package, don't tie yourself to anything specific. If
VMWare and Virtualbox are both pretty simple... (Score:3)
... self-explanatory really. Just try 'em out. I'd recommend VMWare for Windows clients because the integration feels a bit more polished, but you can't really go wrong with either one.
Try them all (Score:2)
Then decide.
Always start with free... (Score:4, Insightful)
... if the option is even halfway decent. In this case, start with Virtual Box. It runs, and runs inside, all major platforms. If you have a Linux ISO or Windows CD you can go from zero to a working VM in about 30 minutes. There's nearly no learning curve to get your first VM up and running, and IF it doesn't fit your needs, you can start looking to see if it has options that you aren't aware of, followed by looking at alternatives.
That said, VirtualBox has fit my needs (mainly testing) just fine for years. VM software is like word processors: they're all pretty comparable and 90% of people's needs can be met by any one of them.
VMware Workstation (Score:2)
For software test scenarios, I find VMware Workstation has just about everything you'd ever want. Its snapshotting feature is especially impressive, if you're diligent about it. Example: You install Windows, clean from the disc, that's a snapshot. Then you run Windows Update a zillion times to get everything up to date, that's a snapshot. Then say it asks you if you want to upgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8. You do; that's a snapshot. Now you can flip back and forth between the two sta
It used to be hard (Score:4, Informative)
All of the above work well and stuff like virtualbox is a free download away.
In some cases I've migrated live systems to virtual with nothing more than clonezilla and virtualbox on what must have been close to the default settings.
KVM, VirtualBox, depends (Score:3)
If you want to do virtualization of servers (most likely headless), then KVM is going to work great. The VMs on these machines you'll likely work with remotely. There are desktop clients for KVM or Xen, such as virt-manager or gnome-boxes, but I find video drivers, particularly in Windows are slow and lack OpenGL or DirectX support. virt-manager is nice for managing a cluster of KVM or Xen machines. You can use one instance of virt-manager to connect to any number of hosts and manage them or view their consoles.
I have a local server for the house that runs KVM virtual machines. I've got several Linux vms for trying out things, and I have a Windows XP instance that I access using rdesktop over the network. I also have two xen-based virtual machines hosted by Linode in data centers.
Gnome Boxes is an attempt to make creating local KVM virtual machines as easy as VirtualBox or VMWare, if you do want to us KVM for desktop virtualization.
For local desktop virtualization, VirtualBox or VMware are still your main options (Parallels being a non-free option). You'll probably want to just start there. Desktop virtualization can do things like integrate a windows desktop in a VM with your linux desktop so you can go between windows and linux windows (never as slick as you think it's going to be, but it works).
Virtualization is pretty easy in practice... (Score:3)
Virtualization is pretty easy in practice. Understanding the theory behind virtualization is what tends to separate the men from the boys. Management of larger virtualization infrastructures, storage, etc... Also tend to be pain points.
I've personally worked with KVM, Xen, and various VMWare products. My usually recommendation is to start with the free version of ESXi available for download from VMWare's website. Although ESXi alone lacks a few core features (you need Vsphere for live migrations, right-click cloning, DRS and a bunch of other things) it does introduce a lot of the core concepts in ways that are fairly easy to wrap your head around.
Understanding how to do the following things are a good start:
- Use over-commitment to make better use of available resources.
- Set reservations, resource pools, and shares to keep critical systems humming along when someone in the engineering department decides to write a fork bomb on a dev machine.
- Live re-size disks.
- Manage virtual switches & virtual networking.
- Optimize virtual guests to run under a hypervisor
- Learn about ballooning, swapping, page sharing, etc.
- Learn how to monitor VMs, and debug disk/network/cpu/memory issues using command-line utilities, such as esxtop.
In general, ESXi is a great way to setup a virtual lab. I usually create a pair of virtual switches; one attached to my ethernet interface, one strictly external, and I route between them using a dual homed firewall distro, such as ZeroShell. This is a great environment for playing with DHCP, and other stuff that could break your home network.
For what it's worth, being a good Virtualization admin usually also means being a good storage admin. If you can get your hands on the netapp simulator, it's absolutely worth playing with.
Finally, knowing how to mess with ESXi does not make you a good Virtualization Admin. Read some books. Mastering Vsphere 5 by Scott Lowe is a good start. It covers everything you need to know about VMWare, and hits on storage and networking as well.
Finally, while ESXi is a great tool for corporate use and to learn virtualization theory, I strongly recommend gaining some experience with KVM. If you know what you're doing, KVM is much more powerful than the stand alone ESXi product. It's great for small businesses, or business that are banking on open source infrastructure, since it isn't artifically neutered the way standalone ESXi is, and doesn't have major licensing costs (unless you insist on RedHat Enterprise Virtualization.) If you need something with enterprise management capabilities and don't mind deploying bleeding edge code, the upstream project for RHEV is available on Fedora. Checkout the oVirt project - they are doing some very cool stuff.
Z-machine or SWEET16 (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16 [wikipedia.org]
OH, you didn't mean THOSE kinds of virtual machines..
All of the above... sort of (Score:3)
VMware: Probably one of the easiest to get set up and master. Dead simple point-and-click interface. Learning this is good if you want a career in virtualization because it is the yardstick by which all others are judged. There are a lot of features though that are disabled in the free version that are used in corporate environments... but you'll have the basics down.
Hyper-V: Also very simple to use and manage... but unlike VMware means you can run it as a side-piece on your existing Windows box rather than having a dedicated piece of hardware just for virtualization. Already built into most modern Windows variants, and used somewhat regularly in corporate environments. Again, paid adds features and support.
Citrix XenServer: Takes the basics of the open source Xen and adds a pretty damned nice GUI. Paid version adds support, but most of the major features are available and functional in the freebie. Trial versions of everything are available. Memory management out of the box is a bit of a pain (no overcommitment by default) but easy enough to modify. Use in corporate environments tends to follow people who have significant Citrix/XenDesktop infrastructure.
Xen (Open Source): By far the best to learn EVERYTHING about how virtualization actually works, but probably the worst for actually getting running VM's. There are GUI tools to simplify it, but since Xen is currently moving to a new toolset that is incompatible with most GUI interfaces, and the GUIs tend to be a smidge buggy on occasion it's usually easier just to learn the command line. Of course, then there are config files, XML files, bridged network interfaces. If you want to learn about the internals this is the way to go... but if you're only going to dedicate a day to trying each one then you might want to skip it... this one will take a couple of days at least even with the several well-written HOWTO's. Having said that, once everything is working it's really nice and you can turn around and say that you know how virtualization works, instead of just saying you know how a single product works!
VirtualBox: Like VMware is good for the beginner to learn the basics because it does have a nice GUI that guides you through everything. Update notifications are a constant irritant though; it seems that every week they're releasing an update for this bug or another... I turn that off and upgrade when I feel like it! However, use in corporate environments is almost non-existent. Good support for most OS's, and decent support for 3D graphics and the like but still pretty kludgy. I use it on my Mac for running my BootCamp partition while under OSX... mostly so I can access stuff on that installation and run updates and the like without having to reboot OSX.
I broke out the two main versions of Xen because they are significantly different. They are similar at the core (based on the same code) but Citrix has it own front-end tools that are incompatible with the tools you'll use under open source. However, the commands are the same and so learning open source Xen will have some bearing on using Citrix Xen.
Of course, there are plenty of other hypervisors out there. My personal recommendation if you just want to play would probably be Hyper-V or VirtualBox. VirtualBox has the advantage of being cross-platform; I don't know if you run Linux or Windows (or OSX) at home, and obviously Hyper-V is Windows only. If you really want to learn virtualization and how it works, then open source Xen is the way to go... I run it on my Ubuntu 12.04LTS box and love it... but it's not for the faint of heart! Setting up the networking alone can be "fun" and you should definitely familiarize yourself intimately with how to undo what you have done so you don't break anything! VMware like I said is used extensively in corporate environments... so if you want to pursue it as a career I'd recommend dedicating a box to an ESXi server and just play with it. It's free and easy... but really doesn't teach much in my opinion.
Really. (Score:5, Funny)
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I suggest DESQview...
Re:Really. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Software preference" clearly falls under "politics/religion"!
Re:Really. (Score:5, Funny)
"Software preference" clearly falls under "politics/religion"!
Only Emacs.
Preferring Vim is 100% rational.
(Ducks...)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently the attention span of the average geek has dropped below 130 to approx 95. Instead of showing us a machine running VMWare inside Xen inside Virtualbox on Linux inside HTML5 Linux emulator.... we are now succumbed to trivial what-if scenarios. What type of dog food should I feed my dog? blah blah blah ... Feed you dog cat flavoured dogfood, c'mon think!
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Running on a Chrome-book of course...
LMAO (Score:2)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you not think?
Ya, that's what I tell anyone that asks me anything. There was a time when you could count on experts helping out to save you some time or to get you started on a complicated area that you weren't familar with. In fact, there use to be computer clubs where information was shared. I guess that time is gone.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a smart person will ask a simple question, not because he needs the answer but because he feels the discussion will be instructive to others, or yield useful new insight. /. being a herd of nerd there will be many and apposite solutions and viewpoints offered. This is a legitimate Ask Slashdot question and should come up every year.
Having praised the question I probably should give an answer: "yes".
And since I've been accused of being cryptically terse here recently I should expand on that. All the major virtual machine platforms are free. A learner who wants to understand the relative merits can and should try them all, read, ask and participate in online discussions about them. Learn about the numerous available virtual appliances free and commercial as well. In the current environment VM proficiency is a basic systems admin requirement.
I'll bite.... (Score:3)
I've been using VMware at work for quickie testing. Seems to work well for this and the licensed copy allows snapshots which are very nice. I understand from developers doing work for us that they run into issues with VMware workstation when they script things to happen with the VMs. VMware player works okay for home use as Workstation is a bit pricey.
Virtual box, for me at home and some at work, works great! I don't know anyone exercising the API so I can't comment on that but for home use this rocks and i
Re: (Score:3)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Interesting)
The culmination of knowledge on the internet should not be a bunch of people telling you the answer. Expert systems and other forms of AI make it easier to look up the answer (i.e. google) which should see, if nothing else, a reduction in basics questions.
Unfortunately this is not the case and there is a particularly large rise in questions like this - particularly amongst the currently-in-school generation of "first world" learners. My citation? Every day experience consulting into schools for OLPC-style deployments.
Re:What the fuck (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the first post seriously contaminated the discussion.
I, for one, but have loved to read the opinion of people actually using such software and their experience with it.
I have no need for VM, but I think the opinion of those using it, in many different settings, is much more valuable that any wiki entry or manual.
Perhaps your time would have better spent giving us some information instead of a rant?
Re: (Score:3)
You know what? Byte me.
I know quite a bit about VMs and such. I have used VMWare, Virtualbox, and Hyper V... but I am still here reading the fucking article and comments.
Why?
Because in a discussion like this, new stuff can be learned. If you REALLY didn't want to fucking participate in the discussion, how hard would it have for you to NOT click on it?
Sadly, I learned nothing new this time. Maybe next time... if you did not scare everyone off.
Before learning something NEW asking ?s is sma (Score:5, Insightful)
As always, Betteridge has the answer. (Score:5, Funny)
Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner?
No.
Re: (Score:3)
It's software. Look at the menu options and read the manual if you need a reference.
Can you not think?
I don't know if you'd bother to read the question, but he wasn't asking how to use the software, he was asking what software was recommended. It's not like he said "Hey, I just installed VMware on my computer and I don't know how to use it. Help!"
I fail to see how your post was modded insightful - you didn't even answer the question that was asked.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone read this guy's post to me, or at the very least, summarize it? It's too long!
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
There's two reasons newbies might need help - the documentation is not up to scratch (or not newbie friendly), or it's a hard problem with no real solution.
"What VM" is, I think, the second case. Postgres and MySQL are both fine databases, but have different strengths. SQL and No-SQL both have merits. KDE and Gnome are both fine desktop managers. VIM and emacs can both edit text.
Sure, there's differentiation, but there's no easy way to say which is best. My advice would be to just look for the one with the best documentation, because as a newbie that's your biggest problem.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you!
Not all of us live in our mother's basement and have unlimited time. Some of us know that even if we were to devote the equivalent of a week of work worth of time that we may not notice subtle differences that might come back to bite us months after we have committed to one system and then require another week of work to convert everything over to try some other system. Some of us remember a time when the internet was for helping newbies (while sometimes asking them to RTFM) rather than berate them.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, I'll field this one. Set up a machine with VM on your home network (no static ip), play with it for a week or two. Now take that machine and stick it on a network with static IPs. Oops! It no longer works.
There's
Re: (Score:3)
[quote]
My advice would be to just look for the one with the best documentation, because as a newbie that's your biggest problem
[/quote]
So this definitively rules out Oracle...
I will add Cast to that list also. Personally I Love VMWare. It has free licences, it's easy for people just starting out without sacrificing more advanced features.
There are some parts of VMware that cost though, but I can live with out them.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
The vitriol that comes out of some people when you dare to suggest that they can handle something independently is amazing.
It's not so much offense at the thought that they can handle something, it's usually offense at the tone used. "Can you not think?" isn't a suggestion that the questioner can handle something independently - it's a blatant insult. As is insinuating that the reason they're asking the question is that they want to put the people they are asking the question to into a subservient position.
You'll be told how smug and elitist you are
"Have you tried Google? Usually it's very good for these sorts of questions." - Telling someone they're competent enough to handle things on their own.
"What kind of fucking moron are you? You're a worthless, conceited human being. Don't waste my precious time." - Smug and elitist
It's really quite an easy difference to pick out, if you're looking for it.
Basic literacy and a few minutes are the only resources this person would need in order to answer his own question.
No, not even close. He's looking for advice for which virtualization software to try. How many different packages are there? How long would it take to read through the manual for each? How long to install each, and give them a decent run through? It's going to be more than "a few minutes".
And that's ignoring the fact that there's likely to be "gotchas" that are going to pop up with advanced usage. How long will it take to learn that program X has architecture issues that only crop up under condition Y? There's also other issues that wouldn't come up in a brief perusal of marketing literature/manual: Is the company going into bankruptcy? Is there a bias against the platform (for whatever reason) in the industry? Is there some kickass new program that somehow escaped the questioner's notice?
Prove me wrong. Point to one or more Google searches (using only the terms in his post or similar - remember he's new at virtualization, so he doesn't know all the jargon), or one or more web pages or manual easily found from the information in the post (e.g. the VirtualBox homepage is fine, but don't assume he knows about expert blogger X who's unknown outside the field) which will tell him what he needs to know, at the quality one would likely expect from asking a site of experts. That is, the pages should give a good, relatively unbiased evaluation and comparison of of various virtualization software packages, focusing on the questions of reliability and ease of use. It should also point out potential gotchas and the features he should be looking into but might not be. And remember that you specified "a few minutes" - all of this information should be readable in less than half an hour.
The annoying part is that everything I said above is straightforward ... and someone's self-importance will be offended by it.
Ironically, I'm most offended by the smug self-importance that infuses your post. "I've got things figured out, and you're horribly misguided. I'm living a decent life, while you are intellectually lazy, entitled, and lacking introspection." - it might not be the tone you intended, but it's the tone that comes across.
Perhaps they will twist what I said to insult me in some manner ... That would be most boring and unsurprising
So to keep from boring you, I'm supposed to point out why what you said was wrong, without actually pointing out what was wrong about what you said ... while such a post would be very interesting, I'm sorry I must disappoint you. (By the way, great job of trying to poisoning the well for replies. Well, great rhetorically, though not so great for honest discourse.)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a long conversation with a man I consider brilliant (at least in the area of causing people to be extraordinary.) I listened to him speak about "Being Nice" as distinct from being gracious or compassionate. We (most folks) be nice so people will like us, so people will think well of us, as a function of social survival. The people who're truly dedicated to the greatness of others, are to a person, not nice. Watch professional coaches, when they need to be supportive they are, when the need to apply brute force to knock the crap loose, they do, when the thing that is required to make a difference is, in your face rage, they will be in your face shouting. The funny thing is that nice people garner like. The hard-ass straight-up people who would rather take a spit in the eye and make you rise to the occasion than all the kind words under heaven, garner rabid dedication and respect.
We've raised a generation of young people who are for the most part spoon fed, almost utterly protected from concerns about self esteem, in a world wrapped in nerf and sanitized for their convenience. That was very nice for this generation of adults, but I'm not at all certain we've done our children or our society any great favors. Perhaps its easier when you make people dependent on authority, so they acquiesce as a matter of habit, herd animals. Personally I think there is healthy place between crazed individualists and social drones. I fear we aren't currently at anything resembling the sweet spot.
Re: (Score:3)
I've noticed this seems to be a chronic problem with the Gen-Y guys we hire. If they can't lean back in their chair and savagely click at shit with their mouse to get things working, they say it's "impossible" or "too hard". What ever happened to being able to delve into a problem to figure out the underlying cause? I'm sure they're capable of it, but I don't know if they just haven't been taught how to do this, or it's just simply that they're too fucking lazy.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Acting helpless is the new(er) status symbol. Handholding you didn't need makes a statement. It says you deserve to be served - you have people for that. Of course intellectual laziness is also a popular development, which oddly seems to get worse and worse as information becomes more and more instantly available.
Look, the guy asked:
"I am getting ready to start learning the use of virtual machines. What VM software would you recommend?"
You then dump on him with a great deal of pontification simply because he asked for opinions. What the hell is wrong with you?
What, pray tell, is the purpose of education if each person has to find out everything by themselves, and no one can take advantage of the collective wisdom of society, and the accumulated learning built up over history?
Is each child destined to be run over by the first car they see, or burned by the first fire, cut by the first knife they encounter simply because asking for advise, and by extension, giving any, is somehow a shameful act?
Asking questions and collecting opinions is how humans learn. Since you apparently woke up one morning and found yourself an infant laying in the weeds, and proceeded to educate, cloth, feed, and raise yourself alone, with no help from society, I'm left with one question: What species are you?
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's actually a fair answer to the original question, so for something a little more challenging, let's change the tone.
You'd like to start getting familiar with the use of hypervisors and virtual machines, from vocabulary up to practical application. You're a hands on kind of guy, but good, accompanying reference material would be useful too.
At first this will be for personal use, but with an eye towards understanding their use in a business environment at the SMB level. Keep in mind, since you're starting out at home on your own equipment, doing this out of pocket, cost is a concern, so we probably aren't looking for a 5-digit pricetag on a commercial solution.
Now, what would you recommend?
Re: (Score:2)
KVM recently introduced PCI passthru. If you buy a second card you can pass it through to the guest and it can utilize it 100%.
The downside is that you either need a second monitor, or have a monitor with multiple inputs and will have to manually switch your screen input (not a bad solution though).
I honestly don't know how stable this is nor have i tried it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd suggest that you try the demos for Fusion and Parallels, see if either is worth the cost or if the free alternative works well enough for your needs.
The original poster's going to start out using Windows as the host, and possibly switch to Linux later, so "VMware Workstation" rather than "VMware Fusion" is the name of the product they want to look at. For Parallels, it's Parallels Workstation (rather than Parallels Desktop, which is the version for OS X hosts).
Other than that, yes, try demos - and bear in mind that, for the non-free-as-in-beer version, switching from Windows to Linux as the host may mean buying another copy.