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What is the most stable and most guaranteed to work (read no stupid compatibility issues) VM for linux at this point? I'm at a point where I'm either going to need to dual boot or have a bulletproof VM solution very soon and I'd like to explore non dual boot options first. I have no idea which VM is most preferred at this point, though, and whether any of them are worth a damn. VPC on the mac sucked sweaty donkey balls, but my dad seems pleased with parallels on his MacBook Pro (tm). Opinions or input?

not sure what you are going to be using it for but

I am currently running web sites on centos5 and xen with vm of centos 5 and it is really stable and pretty slick. it was the same xen setup that was on fedora core 6. running web servers I think this is the way to go

also playing with ubuntu and vmware server and it seems pretty slick too.

there is also virtual box which is next on my list to try.

of course I am running vm's of solaris or a version of linux all of these - I don't have a windows/mac license so I am not able to try windows/mac on any of these and really not planning too - so hope this helps

Thanks - that's useful info, but I guess I needed to be more clear.

I have several windows-only tools and CBT (computer based training) modules I need access to. I usually just remote into my box at work for the tools, but the CBT stuff doesn't work. I either need to run this stuff on a vm or I need to dual boot. I figured I'd ask if VM was a realistic option before I dedicated this weekend to installing windows and reinstalling linux on my lappy.

I am presuming the applications do not rely on 3d acceleration because that is not available on any of the vms yet.

Otherwise its certainly a realistic option, as jsusanka mentioned, there are quite a few.
I personally use qemu + kqemu (kernel module for speed). I have ran different linux and bsd distros on them as well as windows and it works fine.

virtual box code is based of qemu somewhat and is pretty hot.
There is xen but aless you have one of those new intel VT or AMD-V chips respectively windows is a unrealistic guest os because you need to modify the kernel.

yes qemu is excellent too - forgot to mention that one - now I did use windows on qemu 3 to 4 years back - it was windows 2000 and windows 95/98 to run some old educational games for my daughter. they were pre-school and kindergarten games so they weren't needing really high power. but qemu was pretty easy to setup and use and it may fit your situation the best. they have some great documentation and supposedly the tools in fedora 7 that manage xen will also manage qemu images - haven't tried it out yet though. - good luck and have fun!

OK, fwiw I'm using parallels and it's working just fine. There was a little hassle getting it running - a file needed to be updated to get it to run on feisty, and there was nothing outside the forums indicating this. I'm also not super happy that I'm forced to run parallels as root, but it segfaults otherwise. What I can say is that it's nice that there is now an alternative to vmware on linux, but it would be nice if a) the devs were more active in the forums, and b) if they didn't ignore known issues on what is arguably the most popular and fastest growing linux distro. VMware is just as nice, if not nicer, and has some features I really want, but as far as I can tell, parallels is $50 and vmware is $190. That sort of simplifies the decision making process...

I dicked with some of the free options, but they were all way more work than I had time or inclination to deal with.

I have used Qemu and Virtualbox, no need to go proprietary.

Jza wrote:I have used Qemu and Virtualbox, no need to go proprietary.

And you would be willing to risk your immediate career future on them? Out of all of them, VB comes closest to something I'd actually use for my current needs, and last time I tried it - 3 to 6 months ago - it seriously lacked stability. I need a 100% bombproof solution or I'd be far better off dual booting. I also have very little time these days - work, school, kids/family, and major project planning don't leave a hell of a lot of wiggle room. I'm not planning to spend what little time I have to myself dicking with a non-starter solution.

AHhhell, now that there's even an official *buntu repo for it, I suppose I *should* give virtualbox another try, but FWIW, it appears that I'll have to go proprietary in any event. I need USB. Period.

Virtualbox 1.4 has usb support.

and they have ubuntu packages.

and well.... u said that u need stability, they why u using windows?

http://virtualbox.org/download/1.4.0/vi ... y_i386.deb

but hey if you hate freedom be my guest.

Forum seems to have eaten my reply. Basically this:

Your attitude is insulting - you are implying that I am stupid and dislike freedom. Thanks, but save that bullshit for someone else, I'm not biting.

As for freedom:

Closed-source features ¶

The following list shows the enterprise features that are only present in the closed-source edition. Note that this list may change over time as some of these features will eventually be made available with the open-source version as well.

* Remote Display Protocol (RDP) Server

This component implements a complete RDP server on top of the virtual hardware and allows users to connect to a virtual machine remotely using any RDP compatible client.

* USB support

VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and supports passing through USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices to virtual machines.

* USB over RDP

This is a combination of the RDP server and USB support allowing users to make USB devices available to virtual machines running remotely.

* Shared Folders

With the use of Shared Folders, users can share directories on their host system with guest systems.

* iSCSI initiator

VirtualBox contains a builtin iSCSI initiator making it possible to use iSCSI targets as virtual disks without the guest requiring support for iSCSI.

Not free as far as I can tell.

Jza wrote:but hey if you hate freedom be my guest.

I hate freedom too!

Seriously, virtual box is on my list of apps to check out at some point.

The usb support is only available in the non-free version, IIRC.

OK - I have to say the latest NON-FREE version of virtualbox, so far, kicks ass. It has many very nice features, and hasn't crashed once on me in the 24 hours I've been playing with it. So far, it seems like a total win over Parallels. So, Jza, while you were more or less a dick about the subject, and while you were incorrect about it's status as Free Software (at least insofar as the USB support isn't Free), thank you for getting my Irish up enough so that I tried it. I guess I'll test drive both it and Parallels for the next 30 days and see what shakes loose. I'm not opposed to paying money for software, though.

Snarkout wrote:What is the most stable and most guaranteed to work (read no stupid compatibility issues) VM for linux at this point? I'm at a point where I'm either going to need to dual boot or have a bulletproof VM solution very soon and I'd like to explore non dual boot options first. I have no idea which VM is most preferred at this point, though, and whether any of them are worth a damn. VPC on the mac sucked sweaty donkey balls, but my dad seems pleased with parallels on his MacBook Pro (tm). Opinions or input?

Honestly the BEST is Vmware on a dual-core cpu or better (like the Intel Quad, or Mac 8x Mac Pro). Vmware can be used on Linux for free (VMWare Server) and distributed for Linux and WIndows as Virtual Appliances for VMWare Player. My Athlon XP 3000+ is a little ugly, but it does work (2GB Ram).

On Mac, the VMWare Fusion is coming along VERY well, and looks to be able to smoke Parallells quite handily at this point. (I own Parallells 2.x for Win/Lin and 3.0 for Mac).

Now, if you want to hang on for a bit and primarily use Linux, KVM or Xen (forget which) is getting alot of aid from VMWare to standardize and open up on some slick stuff that VMWare has been working on. The disk image format, virtual devices, and the hypervisor is pretty much getting a good face lift thanks to VMWare, and it is all FLOSS. This way, at most you will need to pony up the cash for the Mac if they dont have a player available after Fusion goes gold.

Parallells is good, but not that great. Qemu is marginal, but IIRC can do alternate archetectures, something the rest cannot do. Virtualbox is decent. KVM I havent used too much, and Xen is using Qemu, so ....

My vote is for VMWare unless you need FLOSS, then go Xen or KVM.