Re: vmware

["Robert G. (Doc) Savage" <dsavage@peaknet.net>]

On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 15:56, Leon Raymer wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> I'm doing a little hobby web building and I much prefer working on the
> Linux side of my dual-boot machine. I have quickly discovered, however,
> that there are major rendering differences between Windows and Linux
> browsers.....and even between various versions of the same browser; i.e.
> Windows Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5. and 6.0. It will apparently take a
> while for the W3C standards to stick.....and for the older browsers to
> disappear. So, I'm looking for an economically feasible method of
> switching between Linux and Windows....without having to reboot. I've
> come across VMware Workstation during my search forays but know nothing
> about it....other than what's on their website. Will have to lay out
> some cash for it....but willing to do so if it will lower the
> frustration level.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with VMware?

Leon,

Browsers
========

> major rendering differences between Windows and Linux
> browsers.....and even between various versions of the same browser; i.e.
> Windows Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5. and 6.0. It will apparently take a
> while for the W3C standards to stick.....and for the older browsers to
> disappear

The problem with browsers is that Microsoft is actually drifting away
from W3C. They were members of the team that developed Cascading Style
Sheets v1/v2, but IE doesn't support several parts of the CSS spec and
Microsoft appears to have no plans to fix this. They're running out of
time because they've already announced IE6 will be the last in its line.
All future browsers will be totally integrated into Windows. (DOJ are
you listening?)

If you are doing web development, do so using Mozilla as your reference
standard browser. Except for the CSS stuff, anything that works for
Mozilla will work with IE. Yes, there are rendering differences, but you
should be able to avoid or minimize those.


VMware works. If you need to run Windows apps, particularly those that
must run in a particuilar version of Windows, then VMware is the best
and most reliable way to do so.

VMware
======

Some of VMware's characteristics aren't readily apparent to new users:

1. It is a voracious consumer of system resources. If one Windows
virtual machine requires 256M of RAM, 5G of hard disk space, and a CPU
running 400MHz, it will take those from the host and not give them back.
Running two virtual machines at the same time doubles the demands on the
host. It takes a hugely overbuilt system to run VMware with decent
performance levels. My minimum recommendations would be 1GHz CPU and 1G
of RAM. More will improve the performance of both host and guest
operating systems.

2. PC hardware varieties are increasing faster than VMware can support
them. This is particularly true of USB and FireWire stuff that Windows
supports very well, but where Linux drivers are still in beta (or
earlier). If you're a cutting edge kind of hardware person, you're
probably going to run into support problems faster than less than your
less adventurous friends.

3. New users are sometimes surprised by some of VMware's hardware
limitations. For example, if you have two open VMware sessions running
Windows, only one of them can use physical resources like your CD-ROM
and floppy drives, serial ports, etc. You will probably want to disable
autostart for CDs when you run a VMware session with Windows. Otherwise
the documentation warns you that things might get a confused.

4. VMware tech support is nowhere nearly as robust or easy to find as it
is for either Windows or Linux. It requires expert knowledge levels in
both operating systems as well as the underlying hardware. VMware offers
fairly good technical support through a variety of newsgroups
(http://www.vmware.com/support/using/newsgroups.html). Telephone support
is not available.

5. VMware is expensive to first-time buyers. Upgrades from previous
versions are reasonably priced. It is the best available product to run
Windows applications under Linux, and it's priced accordingly. If you
have to run applications that emulators (Wine, Win4Lin, Crossover, etc.)
don't support, it's an easy choice. The same is true if you're running
Windows apps in a commercial environment. But if you are just a casual
user of Windows applications, it's cheaper and easier to buy a bigger
hard drive and dual boot.

6. There are several VMware products. Workstation is just one of them.
The GSX and ESX servers can run Windows-type servers like SQL Server in
virtual machines on big Linux iron.

Hope this helps...

--Doc


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