17 Feb
2010
17 Feb
'10
12:41 a.m.
On (21:19 16/02/10), John Foust wrote:
I was curious to see if anyone mentioned VMware as an emulation environment
on this list. The archives show a brief conversation about it in 2002
regarding whether it could run OS/2.
I don't see why it wouldn't run OS/2, or most other operating systems that
were available on x86. I've certainly used it to run Plan 9, and ISTR that
people have had NeXTSTEP and Rhapsody up and running too. I *think* the only
time you are likely to run into problems is if you don't have drivers for
whatever emulated network/graphics/sound it provides. That said, such
virtualisation software tends to have an option to set the OS type, but I've
never been sure what this does... Might just be a preset configuration of
minimum RAM combined with certain emulated peripherals.
I've been using it for a client's servers for
the past few months and
it is mind-blowing. Drag-and-drop, super-fast start and stop of entire
virtual servers.
One of VMware's demo appliances is a DOS environment running old games.
Linux large and small is a common OS in appliances, too.
With the free VMware Workstation version, you can easily click-click
and be running a downloaded appliance.
You have to pay for VMWare Workstation. Tbh I much prefer Sun's VirtualBox
these days. It's a bit more fiddly to get up and running in a server
(headless) capacity than VMware Server. But it's free, doesn't take that
much to set up headless instances, the source code is available to the
community edition, and it's catching up with VMware for a lot the fancier
capabilities. I think it makes a better candidate for a community of folks
interested in computer conservation, if for no other reason than we have the
source.
So why aren't we using VMware appliance images to
exchange pre-made,
pre-set environments for running emulated OSes?
One thing I don't like about appliances is that you have to trust whoever
did the O/S install. I'd never use a ready made appliance for any VM
connected to the Internet. They are fine for dipping your toe in the water,
though.
No use for an O/S that won't run on x86 - unless you have, say, a Linux
appliance and SIMH or Hercules etc. But I can't see why you wouldn't run
that emulator on the bare metal... Though I suppose again, that appliances
with a bare minimum Linux/BSD install and configured emulator might be nice
for quickly trying out a classic O/S.
Cheers,
Andrew
--
Andrew Back
a at smokebelch.org