VMWare on MEPIS or raw Debian? Better than Win4Lin?

Post #242,816 by Another Scott 1/28/06 12:23:25 AM Reply	VMWare on MEPIS or raw Debian? Better than Win4Lin? I'm slowly working on trying to be able to get off Windows 2000 in the next 6 months or so. I'm running Simply MEPIS 3.4-2.rc1 on my T41 and it's working OK. I've also got it installed at work on an Athlon64 but I'll need to reinstall it on a different drive. (It's on a RAID mirror and it's not seeing it as a mirror but rather as 2 drives.) So I'm thinking of trying VMWare for those instances when I need a real Win32 solution. That means running VMWare with a Linux host with Win2k as the guest. I see that VMWare Workstation 5.5 has experimental support for Ubuntu, but [link\|http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/intro_hostreq_ws.html\|none listed] for MEPIS or raw Debian. How risky is it to use VMWare on an unsupported distribution? If it's safer to use a different distribution, what would be better - Red Hat or SuSE? Does it make more sense to make the transition by running Linux on VMWare on Win2k than the other way around? (Each version is $189 so getting the choice right is probably worthwhile.) Are the speeds comparable? I'm going on the assumption that [link\|http://www.win4lin.com/content/view/64/125/\|Win4Lin Pro] isn't as good a solution as VMWare even though it's appealing because it's only $60 (until the end of the month). Thanks for any info. Cheers, Scott.
Post #242,823 by admin 1/28/06 6:40:46 AM Reply	Depends on what you're running. I'm using CrossOver Office to run OfficeXP and IE 6 natively on Debian here, and VMWare at work. XOver is fine for a smallish set of known-to-work apps, whereas VMWare is a general solution that will run just about everything I've thrown at it. I used to use Win4Lin, but didn't have as much luck with it as a general solution. The compatibility (last time I tried it; admittedly several years ago) was between that of Wine and VMWare. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #242,844 by inthane-chan 1/28/06 10:27:34 AM Reply	I'm running VMWare on Debian at work. So far, it seems pretty darn stable. Stock install of Woody (I think) - it's for prototyping images for our virtualization project. The only thing I had trouble with was finding the right kernel header package for compilation. When somebody asks you to trade your freedoms for security, it isn't your* security they're talking about.*
Post #243,068 by folkert 1/31/06 4:28:38 PM Reply	VMware v5.5.1 == The best stuff the have made for Linux being the host yet. It works beautimus with 2.6.12+, there was a major change in 2.6.12 that made previous VMware (v5.0-) not be able to work with anything newer then 2.6.11 (but I wouldn't use that steaming Pile that was called 2.6.11) but I'd prefer 2.6.10 or even 2.6.8 if you were to use an older kernel. VMware v5.5.1 is also udev aware and communicates properly to get its devices made proper. Over all, the only big issue I have with it, is Windows and Memory. The more memory you have (I have 2GB) the better. I am buying another 2 GB soon. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* Freedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0; 0 rows returned.

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