[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

VMWare and Notebooks



Hi All,

I have now got a nice small notebook from my employee, so I decided for
once and for all to see which configuration is better - VMWare-NT
version running Linux as a guest - or vice versa..

One of the reasons people wants to run VMWare for Windows and Linux as a
guest is because people thinks that Linux doesn't support all the
goodies that you have on your notebook, while Windows does support all.
Guess what? WRONG! - After installing Redhat 6.2 here, I can tell you
that Linux supports 90% of the hardware which is available on notebooks
out there, so you can avoid installing Windows and VMWare combo. With my
machine (which sells for a very good price I might say) have
top-to-bottom support, and Linux support ALL my hardware.

The machine I have a pretty low-end one: Toshiba Portege 3110ct -
Celeron 300, 6GB Disk, 128MB RAM, 800x600 Trident chip with 2M memory,
and built in Winmodem. I have received the machine with port replicator
which included an OEM 10/100 base-T ethernet port.

After Installing Redhat 6.2 on this machine (and it wasn't easy even to
install! Redhat and mandrake for this issue - don't want to load the
ide-cs module which will add the CD-ROM drive so I can install Linux, so
I had to use another machine and to install through HTTP), I decided to
check out the built-in modem.

As it seems - this is a Winmodem (and a generic one!). Fortunately
Lucent Linux driver works with it perfectly. You'll still have an error
message with kernel version mismatch since Lucent compiled the module on
Redhat 6.1 on kernel 2.2.12, but other than that (and the fauly
installation script - but you can do it manually as I did), the module
seems to work fine (its a huge module - 552K!)

I checked the VMWare web-site - and it looks like the best version to
run with Redhat 6.2 is the VMWare 2.0.1 beta which they have now
available online. I installed it and installed Windows NT 4.0, Office
97, Mozilla M16 (I forgot the Explorer 5 CD at my friend's house :) - I
must say - it runs VERY fast (not as fast as the native, but pretty
fast) if you consider this is a small Celeron machine... I even tried
the Winmodem (you'll need to put the module in memory first!) which I
configured as a generic modem under NT, and it was working VERY well, I
didn't see any performance hits despite what I heard from people about
lousy performance.

I have tried the other way around - Installing Windows 2000, VMWare for
Windows - and Redhat 6.2 as a guest. I installed KDE, Mozilla M16 and
Star Office 5.1. Even without those applications - the performance of
Linux as a guest OS takes a 20-30% hit. The Linux text mode terminal is
one of the worst things in VMWare for NT - they emulate a notebook chip,
so they are drawing the screen, while on VMWare for Linux it uses the
DGA extensions.

So my recommendation - install Linux as a host, and your Windows (NT 4.0
is the fastest if you ask me) as a guest.

-- 


          /_/      /_/_/_/     /_/     /_/ /_/    _/_/      /_/
       /_/_/_/    /_/   /_/   /_/     /_/ /_/    _/_/    /_/_/_/
    / /     /_/  /_/     /_/ /_/     /_/ /_/    _/_/  /_/     /_/
   /_/_/_/_/_/  /_/   /_/   /_/_____/_/  /_/  _/_/   /_/_/_/_/_/
  /_/     /_/  /_/_/_/       /_/_/_/      /_/_/     /_/     /_/

 +------------------------------------------------------------+
 |       Hetz Ben Hamo, Intelligence & Research, Aduva        |
 |           ICQ: 3738847, email: hetz@linuxqa.com            |
 +------------------------------------------------------------+

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il