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Virtualization Goes Mainstream 167

Posted by Zonk from the legits dept.
InformationWeek is reporting that, during the same week that Microsoft announced the free price for Virtual PC, VMWare 1.0 was released for free as well. Though there were already many free options for virtualization available, these major products signal a shift in the industry. From the article: "There are many ramifications here. Obviously, the slew of products means network managers can now adopt virtual servers into their overall strategies and don't have acquisition costs providing a justification to avoid it. Other than the very-high-end VMware ESX and the midline Microsoft Virtual Server on mainstream XP platforms, virtualization is essentially free wherever you might want to use it."
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Virtualization Goes Mainstream More

Virtualization Goes Mainstream

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  • VM Fabric (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @01:53PM (#15728581) Homepage Journal
    Is there a VMWare that distributes tasks across a network of VMWare hosts automatically? So I can just add new hosts to a network to make all the apps run faster? And install apps on a single machine, from where VMWare redistributes the load without my direct intervention?
    • Yes, it's called "Google".

    • Re:VM Fabric (Score:3, Informative)

      by fief ( 12961 ) *
      VMWare ESX combined with VMWare Virtual Center can provide for the ability to do automatic load balancing across VMWare ESX hosts.
      • Would that support a software RAID fabric that lets me distribute both processes and storage across a single virtual host, backed by lots of $150 PCs stuffed with cheap IDE drives? How big can such a beast get?

        • Would that support a software RAID fabric that lets me distribute both processes and storage across a single virtual host, backed by lots of $150 PCs stuffed with cheap IDE drives?

          No, for one thing VMWare ESX doesn't support IDE drives at all, and for another, your licensing costs for VMware per node would run you 20-30 times what your PC hardware cost. VMware ESX is meant to be run on big enterprise grade servers with multiple processors, gigabytes of RAM, and a SAN backend. Think of an ESX server as a

    • Re:VM Fabric (Score:5, Informative)

      by Natales ( 182136 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:25PM (#15728709)
      The recently released VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (which is basically ESX 3.0 + VirtualCenter 2.0 + some add-ons) can do this using a technique called Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS). This is basically a global scheduler running on your VirtualCenter server that works in coordination with the local schedulers in each ESX server part of the same ESX cluster.

      When you hit a user-defined treshold for either memory or CPU on a VM, then DRS will trigger a VMotion of that particular VM to another ESX in the cluster without user intervention, effectively running the VM where it can run the best, based on the SLA you defined when you created it.

      The cool thing about this is that you can now have a predictable cluster utilization level, regardless of where the VMs are running.

      [Disclaimer: I work for VMware]
      • Can it do all that across the Internet, or even just a WAN with guaranteed bandwidth and latency, even if low bandwidth and high latency?

        • Re:VM Fabric (Score:2, Informative)

          by Zine ( 989213 )
          When it migrates between hosts, it doesn't move the virtual disks, just the memory and the cpu contents. Suppose you have two physical hosts with a virtual machine running on one host. The two hosts both see the virtual disks at the same time on some sort of shared storage - be it a fiber attached SAN, NFS share from a NAS device, or or iSCSI over the network. When you tell it to migrate from one host to another, the memory is copied from one host to another over the network.

          As it is copying, the virtual
          • Across the LAN (100+Mbps/<10ms), I just want to expand the RAID across multiple hosts in a single virtual filesystem that every app in the VM fabric addresses thru kernel filesystem calls.

            Across WANs mobile processes and filesystem subtrees could be well supported by caches and pause/copy ops.

            It seems like VMWare running the same SW RAID in its OS instances can do at least that basic config. Hotswappable virtual "network computer" seems already here.

  • Yes, well ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @01:54PM (#15728582)
    ... virtualization is essentially free wherever you might want to use it.

    Then again, first hit is always free.
  • Virtualization is a safe and fairly easy way to try new things or see how security measures may or may not work in a controlled environment. I'm a lowly IT guy who repairs broken Windoze boxes, so I couldn't imagine how useful it is for enterprise, but for the slightly above average user, it's great to test out new ideas or operating systems. Don't get me started on Parallels on OS X, because I'll go Mac fanboy for several pages on how cool that is. I'm quite glad that virtualization is getting so much atte

  • For the uninitiated... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hiryuu ( 125210 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:05PM (#15728627)

    Since I don't claim to have any experience dealing with VMWare, and only passing experience with VirtualPC (and, previously, SoftWindows) on Mac, can someone explain to me how this is different from emulation? Is it different from emulation? I've kept one x86 workstation around my home running Win98 (and dual-boot with Slackware) for a small handful of applications and a few games. The notion of making the machine Slack-only and running Windows virtually with no performance hit from emulating is attractive, but I am quite ready for my assumption to turn out flawed. Could someone with a greater clue than I've got educate me?

    • Re:For the uninitiated... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tx ( 96709 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:17PM (#15728677) Journal
      The difference is somewhat semantic. Many people take emulation to mean "machine emulation" like Bochs for example, where you are emulating the entire hardware of the machine, and performance therefore sucks. What's commonly termed as virtualization emulates some items of hardware, but code is running natively on the CPU.

      In reality, the terms emulation are somewhat interchangeable - you can say "full virtualization", which means the entire machine hardware is virtualized (what is commonly called emulation), and you could say "partial emulation" when referring to what is commonly referred to as virtualization. Indeed, you might even call the likes of WINE "API emulation", though that might be stretching it somewhat.
      • The difference is somewhat semantic...

        Thanks for the response - that helps my understanding quite a bit. So here's a slightly more practical question - does VMWare (with which, again, I am wholly unfamiliar) run on x86 with Linux as the host OS? I'm sure I could find the answer if I went digging, but since this discussion would likely involve people who outright _know_ these answers, I thought I'd ask here. My goal would be to run a Windows environment with minimal performance impact. Would this likely

        • VMWare does run on Linux, however the performance hit would be noticeable (though not Linux-specific), eg the Windows GUI would be somewhat slow, and wrt gaming, that's simply out of the question. As long as you wish to run apps you'll be fine, unless you want a micro-second reaction time when you pull down a menu, but gaming-wise, no way. You'd be better off running Windows natively and Linux virtualized - then your gaming experience wouldn't be affected negatively.
        • Vmware runs fine on linux, and overhead isn't too bad (but keep in mind that if you want really good performance you'll need enough RAM to run the combined total of both OS's). However, not really ideal for gaming, as vmware does not support Direct3D/OpenGL well (I think there is some experimental support for it, but I can't vouch for how stable it is). Note that I've gotten my share of blue-screens using vmware (granted, this is on amd64 which is less than rock-solid for most software), and even the odd
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Jeez, not had enough caffeine, that should read something more like:

        "...but code executed in the guest OS is run natively on the host machine's CPU, and thus runs pretty much as fast as on a native machine."

        Then it might actually make some kind of sense.

    • Emulation, I believe, normally refers to one machine pretending to be another. "Machine", in this context, refers to CPU architecture. VMWare does not emulate a new architecture; it passes x86 straight through to the host.

    • I can't speak for slackware, but I have one of the new white macbooks from Apple, and I run windows XP under parallels. I'm VERY impressed with the speed. However - I recommend oodles of RAM if you're gonna virtualize. Also realize that the macbook is dual core so there's essentially a processor available for each OS. I have no idea how well it would work on a single core or older machine.
    • It is emulation.

      You have a definite performance hit. However, depending on your machine it might not be such a big deal for those uses you have.

      On my home machine, I've run linux and oracle application server inside of windows. It slowed down at pieces, but really wasn't that bad.

      On my work machine, I run windows and Lotus Notes inside my Linux machine and don't even notice the extra OS. We'll see how that holds up as I put SQL Server on there.

      Oh, but turn off the screensaver. The graphical subsystem is hit
      • On my work machine, I run windows and Lotus Notes inside my Linux machine and don't even notice the extra OS. We'll see how that holds up as I put SQL Server on there.

        I have some practical questions:

        - What virtualization software are you using on the machine? (VMWare?)
        - Can you copy-n-paste information between the two systems?

        (I really need to spend some time getting up to speed on VMWare and virtualization.)

  • The only discussion missing.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:24PM (#15728703)
    Is how much overhead does virtualization take up? At what point do you actually need another box because of the performance hit?

    • how much overhead does virtualization take up? At what point do you actually need another box because of the performance hit?

      It's a subjective question. Virtualization is especially good for improving utilization on certain types of servers, for example Web servers. You might have some kind of intranet application running on a Web server that only gets used every so often. The rest of the time it's sitting there idle. So if you add another virtual server to the same machine, sure, in a strict technical

    • Re:The only discussion missing.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Natales ( 182136 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @05:37PM (#15729388)
      Virtualization overhead is not deterministic due to the nature of the code execution algorithm on the x86 CPUs. From the VMware perspective (which is what I know), you have two kinds of virtualization mechanisms: 1) Hosted on top of Linux or Windows, and 2) Bare metal, on top of a thin hypervisor like ESX.

      In the hosted world, the host OS is providing memory management and scheduling, as well as access to its device drivers. In the bare metal architecture, the hypervisor itself provides those functions, making it way more efficient. Recently, a customer was telling me he was running 6 VMs using GSX (now VMware Server) on a 2-way dual-core Opteron box. He installed ESX and he was then running 20 VMs on the same machine. That gives you an idea of the difference on these two approaches from the performance perspective.

      The other reason why your performance may vary, is because you have CPU, memory and I/O overhead also. In the CPU realm, the vmkernel is running on ring 0, and the guest OS is relegated to ring 1 in the x86 CPU. The problem is that not all assembly instructions can be executed successfully in ring 1, so VMware's Binary Translator module will actually detect those patterns of "dirty" assembly instructions and will insert traps so every time you hit one of those, it gets executed by the vmkernel on behalf of that VM. So, the more traps you need to do, the more CPU overhead you get.

      Additionally to the CPU overhead, you have memory mapping overhead (i.e. no real DMA), I/O subsystem overhead, etc.

      Numbers can vary a lot. In general, large companies consider an average of 15% of virtualization tax, which is realistic when you want to run a large number of VMs in multiple systems. In any case, the best approach is to always test your workload before you put it in a sensitive environment.

      [Disclaimer: I work for VMware]

  • It's free... At least now. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vmfedor ( 586158 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:30PM (#15728730)
    I'm certainly not an expert but it doesn't take a genius to see what *might* (and possibly will) happen.


    OK. So Microsoft makes Virtual PC free. Suddenly everyone starts using virtualization software and (besides the licensing fees Microsoft will get for each copy of its OS that is virtualized) it's free and wonderful and everyone is happy that they can run all of their Operating Systems on one PC with much less hassle than before. Virtualization takes off, new uses are discovered for it, and it changes the way networks can be used. Hooray!


    But eventually Microsoft stops maintaining Virtual PC (and discontinues support for it on any future operating systems) and decides to release Microsoft's new "Virtual Console" software that costs mucho bucks. Suddenly everyone that relies on Virtualization realizes that they'll either have to switch to some other virtualization software, change their software systems entirely, or simply bite the bullet and spend the money to upgrade to the new program.


    This probably isn't news to anyone. In fact, it's the way things have been done since the first closed-source software program was created and sold. But I think that this is a perfect example of where Open Source software could really fit the bill and cause a paradigm shift to a better world where people aren't locked into one provider or another. If the OSS community could pull together and release a killer Virtualization app that's free as in speech perhaps people would start to see *why* software needs to be free, and perhaps they would realize it goes deeper than simply price.


    I'm not trying to spread Microsoft FUD or spread the OSS gospel... but I think in scenarios like this an OSS alternative would be a no-brainer. Are there any OSS virtualization software suites in development right now (besides Wine)?

    • Are there any OSS virtualization software suites in development right now (besides Wine)?

      WINE is not virtualization software. WINE is more of a hack that maps API calls. If you are looking for OSS virtualization software, check out XEN [cam.ac.uk] aka The XEN Hypervisor. It works great. Xen is the reason that VMWARE and Virtual PC are now free. Xen smokes both VMWARE and Virtual PC in terms of performance.
      • Except that with currently available hardware, XEN isn't a VM layer, its a hypervisor. Technology asside, that means that only OS's that have been specificly altered to run on it work, and so far that includes only (some) OSS OSs, unless you have an accademic/research license with Microsoft or work in Provo.

        I dont agree that XEN is the reason for the zero-costing of these products. MS undercut VMWare on the workstation product line. VMWare noticed/realized/always-planned that the money was on the server, an

        • Except that with currently available hardware, XEN isn't a VM layer, its a hypervisor. Technology asside, that means that only OS's that have been specificly altered to run on it work, and so far that includes only (some) OSS OSs, unless you have an accademic/research license with Microsoft or work in Provo.

          That is not true. You can buy a Core processor (or any processor with Intel-VT support) and run Windows XP under Xen right now.

          There are even HOWTOs [planetjoel.com] doing the usual rounds.

          Your information is

        • I dont agree that XEN is the reason for the zero-costing of these products. MS undercut VMWare on the workstation product line. VMWare noticed/realized/always-planned that the money was on the server, and (significnatly) server management side of things. So they cut MS off at the knees, producing a zero cost player, and then eventually zero cost Server.

          Thank you. I was actually with VMware trainers in Palo Alto the day that the VMware Server beta was announced. There was not a SINGLE mention of XeN. A
      • Xen smokes both VMWARE and Virtual PC in terms of performance.

        This often is true, but it really depends on what you need to do. Unless you're running Xen on a CPU that has VT support on-chip, you're not running any VMs at all unless the guest OS has a kernel specifically modified to run with it.

        I use Xen at home to run five Debian servers on a single box (and had to recompile the kernels for the domU and dom0 VMs). It runs wonderfully, and hasn't given me a moment's trouble. However, I'd never be a
        • Unfortunately, while Xen requires a modified OS in order to run. While Xen runs most Linux distros fabulously with their modified Linux kernel, Xen will not run Windows as a guest OS. OTOH, there is QEMU, which will run a whole slew of guest OSes on Linux or any other OS without modifications to either the host or the guest. Add in the (unfortunately) non-Free QEMU accelerator, and you've got an virtualized Windows (XP or 2000) that runs as well as it would with VMWare.

          • OTOH, there is QEMU, which will run a whole slew of guest OSes on Linux or any other OS without modifications to either the host or the guest. Add in the (unfortunately) non-Free QEMU accelerator, and you've got an virtualized Windows (XP or 2000) that runs as well as it would with VMWare.

            In theory. In practice, I've found that VMware is significantly faster and more responsive than QEMU, even with kqemu installed. Getting kqemu running is particularly tricky; I never got it working with a Win98 VM.

        • Is that snapshot system is just awesome. I manage lab images using it, makes PITA software installs safe. Snapshot, try it, roll back if it doesn't work. You can shanphot at every step of the way to roll back to different locations and try different things.

          Also what makes it all possible is their cool P2V tool. I build a system with the OS and drivers it needs, then I use P2V to take it and reconfigure it for a VM. However, P2V doesn't damage the orignal configuration. So when I take a Ghost image of the vi

      • Yes, WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not virtualization software. But you have to be pretty ignorant to call it a "hack". Making the Windows GUI APIs work under Linux takes some fairly sophisticated programming. You can't just say, "oh, the app wants me to create a Windows frame, I'll create a GTK frame instead." You have to do event handling, implement a lot of screen widgetry, and a lot of other stuff that's non-trivial.

        You're also being a little dim if you think Xen is the reason Virtual PC is free.

        • (I would've posted this yesterday, but /. was "down for database maintenance" for several hours, starting around the time I wrote this.)

          Nor does Xen have anything to do with VMWare being free -- because it's not. Yes, VMWare Server is free, but VMWare workstation is still $189

          Is there any reason why someone would fork over close to $200 for VMware Workstation when VMware Player (and, more recently, Server) are free-as-in-beer? I'll allow that setting up VMware Player from scratch requires a bit of dig

      • Are there any good Xen tutorials out there for amateurs? I'd love to play with it but it seems like it's over my head.
    • So Microsoft makes Virtual PC free. Suddenly everyone starts using virtualization software and (besides the licensing fees Microsoft will get for each copy of its OS that is virtualized)

      I like to think of virtualization as 3 different sets of solutions: 1) for optimizing server performance vs. cost; 2) a "nice to have" kind of thing for development workstations 3) a tool to ease the transition between MS Windows and Linux

      In the server optimization field, Microsoft may follow whatever trend they need to, in

      • That would work perfectly in a scenario like you described where there's no real need or desire to upgrade to a new version. It would certainly extend the life of your still-functional operating systems, that's for sure.

        However, my point was that the OSS community should strive to make a cross-platform virtualization solution. I'm guessing MS is banking on the notion that, since virtualization is still a fairly young technology, making it accessible with free software will make it "take off" and that's wh

  • 1. Wait...

    2. EU's windows-based PCs are infected with viruses and crash causing loss of all records relating to fines against Microsoft.

    3. Profit!!
    • 2. EU's windows-based PCs are infected with viruses and crash causing loss of all records relating to fines against Microsoft.

      Why bother releasing a virus to crash Windows? All Microsoft has to do is drag this out long enough in court and the machines will trash themselves.

  • I hope ESX is a cash cow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:40PM (#15728780)
    Microsoft can, of course, afford to play this "free" game until the cows come home. I hope VMware can survive this. While sysadmins (okay, maybe not MSCE "sysadmins") will likely continue to choose the VMware solution, in the end we all know deployment is often affected by drive-by management decisions.
    • Microsoft can, of course, afford to play this "free" game until the cows come home.

      That is why the government "punished" them for the IE Netscape thing. I guess it has been a long enough wait for them to use their large bank account to put yet another small company out of business.
    • ESX is a cash cow and EMC owns VMWare. Until Microsoft gets into the enterprise SAN space I don't think VMWare has too much to worry about since ESX and EMC products are pretty much tied together.
    • VMWare has the lead in the enterprise arena for Virtual Infrastructure. Comparing Microsoft's Virtual Server to ESX Starter, the features are pretty much one for one. Past those features though is where the enterprise is interested, and are willing to pay for those features. But like you said, hopefully management just doesn't look at the dollar figure, but at the big picture with what works best for their business practices.

      Looking at Microsoft's features page:
      http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/ [microsoft.com]
      • Take a host running a 32-bit OS, either Windows (yuck) or Linux. Boot a virtual machine into a 64-bit OS. It works!

        For anybody who knows anything about how x86-64 CPUs work, this is obviously an insane hack. They must be switching into long mode to run the 64-bit OS, then switching back to deal with the host.

        Going the other way, 32-bit on 64-bit, is also insane. Every IRQ means switching back into long mode, out of what may even be real mode or virtual x86 mode. Woah...

        • Yup, that's what it takes. But when you think about it, WoW64 (running 32-bit apps on Windowx x64) or running 32-bit apps on Linux do the same thing, and take the mode switch on every system call. It's not all that expensive ... a few thousand cycles ... and world switches are less common than context switches.
          • Running a 32-bit app on a 64-bit OS is easy. The processor does the switch easily and automatically, just by loading a code segment with the long-mode bit set correctly. This is nearly free.

            VMWare is doing witchcraft. All sorts of screwy data structures must change. There is the GDT, the IDT, numerous control registers... It's so insane that neither Windows nor Linux is able to support 16-bit apps on a 64-bit kernel. (because 64-bit can not service 16-bit, and thus you'd need to become 32-bit in order to ge
  • I've spent 10 hours over the last two days trying to get Windows XP working on Xen. I bought all the right hardware, followed all the right instructions, and hit a wall. I've found other people with the same problem (e.g. http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-user s /2006-06/msg00452.html [xensource.com]) and some of them got around it... others didn't.

    I've tried IRC, I've read the docs, I've even rebuilt the FC5 kernel RPMs with some patches, but nothing works.

    Wake me when virtualisation on Linux is as simple as it
    • Yes everybody should use the slower, more expensive solution until you can get Xen to work.

    • Re:Xen... (Score:3, Informative)

      by nacs ( 658138 )
      Wake me when virtualisation on Linux is as simple as it is on OS X with Parallels.
      You do realize that Parallels is available for Linux [parallels.com] too right?

      I've been running it on my Linux box for a while now and it works very well--it even supports the Intel VT acceleration built into the new Intel chips (like on my Pentium D) unlike VMware.
  • There are virtually many virtual ramifications here. Obviously, the virtual slew of virtual products means virtual network managers can now virtually adopt virtual servers into their overall virtual strategies and don't have virtually any virtual acquisition costs providing a virtual justification to virtually avoid it. Other than the virtually very-high-end virtual VMware ESX and the virtual midline Microsoft Virtual Server on virtual mainstream XP virtual platforms, virtualization is essentially virtually
  • I tested VMWare Server a few days ago.

    I installed it under Windows XP, on a Pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz, 1 GB machine. It did not ask for a reboot (good thing).

    Then just for fun, I installed Kubuntu 6.06 in it. It works, but you feel it is slow. So, it would not be something that I would run regularly.

    I was hoping to run VMWare on Linux, and having Windows inside a VM for testing stuff. Not sure if Voice applications (e.g. Yahoo Messenger, MSN, ...etc.) would work on a virtualized Windows machine inside Linux or
    • It will be if you're using it for desktop-type stuff.

      Where this really shines is in the server room where you're less bothered about "does the display update quickly" and more bothered about "can it keep up with demand". When "demand" can't possibly be more than 100Mb/s (unless you're using gigabit throughout, of course), it takes a very processor-intensive app which requires 100% CPU time to keep up with 100Mbps.

  • A good replacement for laptops (Score:3, Informative)

    by zlogic ( 892404 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @03:37PM (#15729007)
    For those that don't want to carry their laptop from home to work and back again (not using on on the road), virtualization is a great option. I created a win'98 image with all kind of useful stuff and carried it to university and back home on a USB flash drive. When I get to a PC with VMWare installed, I load my environment and have everything configured, along with the latest copy of my files. Also great for demonstrating how your software works on a PC you don't own. You'll get your complete and familiar environment.
    External HDDs also work well, but they won't fit inside a shirt pocket.
  • Funny, I always thought that when things used to cost money and now they're giving them away, that's called market failure.

    Water falls from the sky and we still pay for it. How badly is virtualization tanking that they need to charge less than water?
  • I've noticed that VMWare is still charging for their Workstation product, even as they're giving away VMWare Server. From the website, it seems that they have a more or less identical set of features. (They approach the products from quite different perspectives, so it's hard to compare them.)

    Can anyone knowledgeable tell me what the difference between the Workstation and Server is? (I'm currently a happy owner of an older version of Workstation and want to know if I should upgrade Workstation or switch
    • Server supports multiple processor guests (dual cores too)...
      Server has a web based interface where you can have some control over virtual machines
      Server lets you run a remote client to connect to the server
      Server lets you detach the gui and leave the images running in the background
      Workstation has (or will have) support for hardware accelerated 3d, currently very beta.

  • VMware server (Score:3, Informative)

    by LIGC ( 974596 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @04:53PM (#15729252)
    I've been using VMware server for Ubuntu 6.06 and Windows Vista beta 2. It has a certain cool factor to it, and Ubuntu runs fast enough that you could run at least 2 applications, such as Firefox and GAIM, but for actual work on a CPU without VT support, it's extremely painful. And without graphics hardware virtualization (which ATI and Nvidia better integrate soon in their GPUs), running even a GUI like Vista Standard is slow and cumbersome.

  • MS Virtual Server 2005 *is* free (Score:4, Informative)

    by gothicpoet ( 694573 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @05:16PM (#15729326) Homepage Journal
    Contrary to the quote from the article, MS Virtual Server 2005 *is* free. You have to have a license for each concurrently running instance of a Microsoft operating system but you do not have to purchase a license for Virtual Server itself. It's a free download. If you run a non-MS operating system on it, it's completely free. It's been that way since April.

    So the real comparison with the new "free" VMWare should be against VS 2005, and not against Virtual PC which is just a desktop emulation app.

    Not saying one is better than the other -- just compare the same type of fruit when making your own decisions. The article is badly written or it's writer didn't understand what he was writing about.

  • Are there any virtualisation things which let the guest OS have direct access to parts of the hardware, eg so that I can run copy-protected games inside a windows VM inside linux? (at least, the ones which rely on the CD containing special data in non-standard areas)
  • Load VM Ware on the latest/greatest G4 HP Proliant box - running Quad Xeon's and like 8GB of RAM then just for kicks - in a VMWare session install and then run Windows 3.1!

    Anyone who can remmeber this dark age of computing - and can remember how long that POS OS took to load will get a huge kick out watching it run like this.

    You say go and BAM! Instant Windows 3.1 - You won't even see that stupid flash screen it used to load

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