[Ham-Computers] VMWARE player

[jeff]

It was suggested that I post some of my experiences with virtual 
machines in hopes that others would benefit.  So, off we go....(way off)


You certainly can't argue with the price (how does free work for you?). 
  When I read that Vmware had put out a multi-platform player, I figured 
why not give it a shot.  My boss seemed quite enthusiastic about it too, 
so there was another good reason to go forth into that black processor.

I run Windows strictly because I have to support it.  It pissed me off 
for the last time two years back and I switched to linux.  Now I have a 
linux and Win machine at work and home.  Why Windows at home?  It is the 
only OS with decent scanner (radio) control apps.

Driven by the desire to control my scanners free from Windows, I tried 
Wine, which allows Windows apps to run under linux.  I had varying 
amounts of success, mostly very little.  Mind you, it runs Utorrent like 
a champ.  The app has come a long way from when it used to crash merely 
by bringing it up.  Unfortunately there's a lot of tinkering involved if 
you want to do silly things like use serial ports (one per scanner).

So I dl'd vmplayer and set about figuring out how to work it.  It's 
actually pretty simple for any OS.  The fun part is that you can dl all 
sorts of virtual appliances (spam filters, gateways, linux distros, all 
sorts of stuff) but you have to make your own Windows virtual machines.

Google is your friend, as usual.  You can find all sorts of great info 
on creating virtual machines, as well as other vm-like solutions (MS has 
a player app, the name of which escapes me, but it's slow; there's QEMU, 
a few for MACs, etc).

In short and not particularly accurate order, you can dl virtual disks 
(they're just like an empty hard drive but they're small files) and 
templates for installing Win or most anything else that will install 
from a cd or dvd.

When vmplayer boots, it appears as if there's a window with a machine 
starting up in it.  If you're booting to a cdrom (I had WinXP in the 
drive), it comes up as if you were booting your pc, ready to begin the 
installation.  Depending on the speed of your machine, you'll have an XP 
virtual machine in 30-90 minutes.

------->>  NOTE:
I have to make a pit stop here to remind you about the necessity of 
online safety.  If you intend for your virtual image OS to access 
anything past the network card in its machine, you will need to apply 
ALL of the OS patches, make sure there's virus protection and a 
firewall.  There are very good free virus scanners and firewalls 
available (Google `Top 46' for a list of very good freeware).

If you don't intend for the machine to reach out, you won't have to 
patch it, but now would still be a great time to make sure your host 
machine is up to date with patches and antivirus definitions.  And of 
course your firewall... I'm sure you were going to get around to it but 
forgot....

<<--------

The virtual image you just created is every bit the OS it would be if 
you installed it on your main machine as the only OS.  You probably 
think you need hideous amounts of resources to do this - you don't.  My 
home machine has an AMD2200+ CPU with about 1.5g of ram and it runs 
linux beautifully, along with a virtual XP machine controlling the 
scanners.  My other home machine has a less capable AMD processor and 
runs an XP VM under XP itself without too much of a performance hit.

Don't get me wrong - it's not foolproof.  You'll have to do some digging 
to get the configuration correct, especially if you want to use the host 
machine's CDROM, soundcard, USB or other ports.  It's worth it.

Since my boss was talking about virtualization, I figured he'd be 
interested in my latest Odd Display (one of many, I assure you).  I had 
linux running in a VM under XP on one box and on the other I had XP 
running in a VM under linux.  He knew he needed to be impressed but I 
got the idea that he wasn't totally sure of what he was looking at :)

When you `shut down' the VM, it saves its state so you can pick up where 
you left off or start over with something different.  The images are 
supposed to be portable too, meaning you can use them on other machines 
on which you have vmplayer installed.


Ok, you say, so what's the practicality of all this nonsense?
Quite frankly, I haven't determined this yet... I've been having too 
much fun playing with it.  I know that in the near future, I can 
jettison Windows as a primary OS because I can run it in a VM if I 
really need to.  The less Microsoft product in my house, the happier I 
am (and safer, too).

There are a ton of free and not so free virtual machines available for 
the downloading.  They're linked to the Vmware site.  There's a very 
good commercial firewall/antispam/anti-malware gateway from Astaro that 
they just released for free to consumers on systems with 10 or fewer 
users.  I'm going to give it a try when I get some time.


So go out there and dl the vmware player, some virtual machines, and 
some tools to create your own.  Make some machines of differing OSes and 
run them under your main OS.  I'm by no means an expert, but feel free 
to fire off any questions you have and I'll try to point you in the 
right direction.

More as I find it.



Meanwhile, I have been reserving some time for another amusing little 
bit of fun I've picked up lately: dual monitor systems for one pc.  Some 
newer video cards support two monitors natively.  If yours doesn't, you 
can pick up a cheapie video card, plug it into a free slot (pay 
attention to whether it's PCI, AGP, or PCI-X), plug in a spare monitor 
(they're cheap as dirt these days) and be off on a multi-window, 
multi-desktop adventure.

I thought it was a bit silly at first, but now I don't know how I ever 
lived without it.  You can spread your work across two monitors.  You 
can keep all your email stuff open in front of you and maybe your mp3 
player on the other monitor.  More space=more productivity (for me at 
least).

It's very easy to do with Windows, considerably less easy with linux. 
I'm working on the linux side now.



Keep following along - I'd love to say I've been a bad influence on even 
more people than I know about :)


-=-=-
... Jeff for President - the ultimate nightmare of the Great Unwashed
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