Trip Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 how compatible are the major packages with virtual box ? i've only every toyed with virtual box on old computers ... but i understand its quite possible to run apps like photoshop and flstudio but what about games ? can i run these through a virtual box or will they lag like crazy / be unplayable or just simply not work ? i'd love to make a full switch over to linux but i can't go without my games ... or should i just have one windows install and on ubuntu install on seperate partitions / disks ??? advice please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 I don't think you will be getting a good game performance after all. You may be able to play, but like I said the performance in general, its not going to be very effective, as it would on a normal hardware PC. There would certainly be some lags for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 (edited) its sooo frustrating having to switch between pcs / os's all the time lol i wish valve would hurry up with steam and porting some games i have UT3 for linux but thats about the only decent game ... need tf2 or cod before i switch and the other thing is linux is more than capable of running them !! (wonder if publishers get $$$ for keeping them ms) Edited February 3, 2011 by Trip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
commodo Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 You can try to look into hypervisor type virtualization technologies. They basically allow you to run in parallel Windows, Linux and whatever. We have some at work, but they're commercial. The idea is that you run a small hypervisor (that's what the program is called) underneath the operating systems and that distributes hardware resources between the OSes. It would be best to have at least a CPU with 4 cores for ideal performance on both OSes, but some of these technologies allow also run on single core machines. Then you can attribute 2 cores to Linux, 2 to Windows (or 1 to Linux and 3 to Windows depending the case), and distribute the RAM between the two, partitions and so on. Of course you'd need 2 monitor outputs, one for each OS, and I think ethernet cards can be bridged by some hypervisors, or at least allows you to create VLANs. Anyway, I was thinking of trying some of the open-source/free ones that are out there; on my initial research (a while back) I found some that were basically virtualization by taping into a host kernel; for example : Cooperative Linux; this one basically just goes deep into the Windows kernel (ring zero) and accesses resources for Linux; it's supposed to be faster this way than running VmWare player or Virtualbox (although they might also have something similar). Once I have found one that taps into the Linux kernel but I can't find it right now. So, there will come a day when users too will be able to run 2 OSes on the same hardware pretty easily and efficiently. Right now, the good stuff is mostly available only in industrial applications and costs a hell-of-a-lot-of-money. Or who knows, maybe Lindows will come back to allow us to easily run both Windows and Linux apps :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
commodo Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Oh, I just remembered; there is this cool project called ReactOS, which is basically an open source rewrite of Windows; it's supposed to be Windows XP compatible, but because it's open source they're usually behind a couple of years and haven't yet reached a stable point, but I think it would be an awesome alternative to Windows. Maybe if they merge their kernel with Linux we'd have a better working model than Wine on Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 You can try to look into hypervisor type virtualization technologies. They basically allow you to run in parallel Windows, Linux and whatever. We have some at work, but they're commercial. The idea is that you run a small hypervisor (that's what the program is called) underneath the operating systems and that distributes hardware resources between the OSes. It would be best to have at least a CPU with 4 cores for ideal performance on both OSes, but some of these technologies allow also run on single core machines. Then you can attribute 2 cores to Linux, 2 to Windows (or 1 to Linux and 3 to Windows depending the case), and distribute the RAM between the two, partitions and so on. Of course you'd need 2 monitor outputs, one for each OS, and I think ethernet cards can be bridged by some hypervisors, or at least allows you to create VLANs. Anyway, I was thinking of trying some of the open-source/free ones that are out there; on my initial research (a while back) I found some that were basically virtualization by taping into a host kernel; for example : Cooperative Linux; this one basically just goes deep into the Windows kernel (ring zero) and accesses resources for Linux; it's supposed to be faster this way than running VmWare player or Virtualbox (although they might also have something similar). Once I have found one that taps into the Linux kernel but I can't find it right now. So, there will come a day when users too will be able to run 2 OSes on the same hardware pretty easily and efficiently. Right now, the good stuff is mostly available only in industrial applications and costs a hell-of-a-lot-of-money. Or who knows, maybe Lindows will come back to allow us to easily run both Windows and Linux apps :P The VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), will do just fine since it does not rely on an operating system to run, so there should be no performance issues whatsoever. And as Commodo was stating the VMs get direct access to the hardware, just like a normal OS running on a standard box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 its def worth looking at ... will do some reading and see if there's some opensource / freeware alternative sounds like a good ep for darren ;) lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mux Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 (edited) You can try to look into hypervisor type virtualization technologies. They basically allow you to run in parallel Windows, Linux and whatever. We have some at work, but they're commercial. The idea is that you run a small hypervisor (that's what the program is called) underneath the operating systems and that distributes hardware resources between the OSes. It would be best to have at least a CPU with 4 cores for ideal performance on both OSes, but some of these technologies allow also run on single core machines. Then you can attribute 2 cores to Linux, 2 to Windows (or 1 to Linux and 3 to Windows depending the case), and distribute the RAM between the two, partitions and so on. Of course you'd need 2 monitor outputs, one for each OS, and I think ethernet cards can be bridged by some hypervisors, or at least allows you to create VLANs. Anyway, I was thinking of trying some of the open-source/free ones that are out there; on my initial research (a while back) I found some that were basically virtualization by taping into a host kernel; for example : Cooperative Linux; this one basically just goes deep into the Windows kernel (ring zero) and accesses resources for Linux; it's supposed to be faster this way than running VmWare player or Virtualbox (although they might also have something similar). Once I have found one that taps into the Linux kernel but I can't find it right now. So, there will come a day when users too will be able to run 2 OSes on the same hardware pretty easily and efficiently. Right now, the good stuff is mostly available only in industrial applications and costs a hell-of-a-lot-of-money. Or who knows, maybe Lindows will come back to allow us to easily run both Windows and Linux apps :P I was always curious if there was anything at the hypervisor level that allowed you to have video output to a monitor (Maybe a few, but one step at a time :P) with the ability to toggle between different guests? I guess sort of like using a KVM switch (Keyboard, video, mouse, not KVM virtualization). I think a setup like this could really pave the way for power users in the future. Edited February 3, 2011 by mux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 I was always curious if there was anything at the hypervisor level that allowed you to have video output to a monitor (Maybe a few, but one step at a time :P) with the ability to toggle between different guests? I guess sort of like using a KVM switch (Keyboard, video, mouse, not KVM virtualization). I think a setup like this could really pave the way for power users in the future. I am already a power user, if I had enough space in my room, I would've already built a full virtualized server room. And with that kind of power, I would try to make money by selling some of my services online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mux Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 (edited) I am already a power user, if I had enough space in my room, I would've already built a full virtualized server room. And with that kind of power, I would try to make money by selling some of my services online. What I was getting at is that it would essentially allow you to run any combination of OS's (at the same time if you wanted) on the hardware instead of the OS itself. This means you could be owning it up in some game that hates WINE on Windows and then instantly switch back to a bash shell running a msfconsole rooting the gameserver. Clearly that isn't a very realistic scenario, but you get my point. Citrix uses good logic on the XenClient sales pitch where they explain how it's useful to run 2 completely seperate desktops (A business and a personal) on a single laptop. Edited February 9, 2011 by mux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 What I was getting at is that it would essentially allow you to run any combination of OS's (at the same time if you wanted) on the hardware instead of the OS itself. This means you could be owning it up in some game that hates WINE on Windows and then instantly switch back to a bash shell running a msfconsole rooting the gameserver. Clearly that isn't a very realistic scenario, but you get my point. Citrix uses good logic on the XenClient sales pitch where they explain how it's useful to run 2 completely seperate desktops (A business and a personal) on a single laptop. I did get your point and that's what I plan on doing in the future, build an ISXI server with several virtual machines on it for different purposes. Like a dedicated Mysql server, webserver, OpenVPN and a few other servers too. But elbowroom is what I don't have at the moment, so as soon as I move out I'll get my project taking off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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