Testing out distributions/software / Playing around with things (Was: [ILUG] Thanks)

[Conor Wynne]

On 30/11/2006 00:35, "Jeroen Massar" <jeroen at unfix.org> wrote:

> Thomas Meehan wrote:
> [..]
>> I'm hoping that the more user friendly Ubuntu will help me over come these
>> obstacles and allow me to get to grips with Linux.
> 
> In these cases (testing out new software and just playing around and
> also quite a number of other cases) VM's are very very helpful, thus if
> you are a Windows user then using a VM saves you some problems, so that
> you can become more familiar with the new system before moving over
> completely; VMware Server (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/) is
> free for download and is perfect for testing out new programs/systems
> and in effect everything. You can also abuse it to run gNewSense in, as
> the VM that VMware provides is completely supported without binary
> firmware. This thus gives you a nice free system to play with bu

Vmware server really is cool, although I believe that xen supports windows
installations as long as your chip and BIOS supports it. (forgot the term)

I have a wee server in work which runs RHEL4-AS & vmware server.
It only has a gig RAM, so I only run one (sometimes two VM's) - I do not
like swapping!!!

The vm runs win2k, serving dns, active directory & runs BackupEXEC 10 -
which backs up remote linux boxes (just did that before leaving for
casework, I will be adding services to windows as casework demands). I
originally built the AD vm for a samba / AD integration issue on SLES10 -
which is a bit buggy methinks!

Anyway, I export the display to my laptop (OSX with X11) and use rdesktop to
connect to another server in the lab, and so on....

It works a treat, and is surprisingly fast. I plan on installing all my
management stations on this same VM as it seems to have the horsepower
required. The rhel4 box acts as a proxy for InTarWeb access, aswell as
mounted ISO images.

I shall likely install esx3 on my other server. When RHEL5 is released, I'll
get a new server and install xen.

> t still
> allows you the stuff you are used to in the Windows part.
> 
> One can even use both at the same time then (memory/cpu allowing ;) by
> having a Cygwin X server running on the Windows part and opening xterms
> from your VM on the Windows part, perfectly mixing the two together
> allowing one to use the best of both worlds.

Yeah, cygwin is very handy, but I prefer the OSX for a desktop.
I do : OSX for desktops, LINUX (predominantly RHEL) for servers, and windows
is resigned to life in a vm ;-0

Vmware server does not have all the features of esx, but I still prefer to
run linux as the underlying OS.
 
> It all depends of course where one needs a box for; if you need it
> specifically to server thousands of files then go for a native box, if
> you only need to play around and test a bit a VM is perfect.
> 
> Of course if one has a Linux box, using Xen/Vmware/etc there one can
> also test out other things.
> 
> Greets,
>  Jeroen

Regards
Conor