[PLUG] XP in VMware or VirtualBox etc.

William A Morita wamorita at hevanet.com
Thu Jun 26 04:35:45 UTC 2008


Joe,

You have my attention with your reply.
I would be interested in the following information:
 * How was your XP virtual machine generated?  Did you:
    o Install XP from CD   or
    o Convert an existing install into a virtual environment

I also would be very interested in the what was needed to configure your
Linux environment to allow the smooth integration you are claiming.

I plan to be running on a 32-bit Linux on a quad processor.  
I've currently got 3 Gb of RAM.  I know XP can't use a full 4 Gb, can Linux?

If you would like to take this discussion off line, that is fine with me.

- Bill Morita 

wamorita at hevanet.com 
Home: (503) 697-6994
Cell: (503) 260-3876

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Shisei Niski [mailto:joeniski at easystreet.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:27 AM
To: wamorita at hevanet.com; General Linux/UNIX discussion and help; civil and
on-topic
Subject: Re: [PLUG] XP in VMware or VirtualBox etc.


William A Morita wrote:
> Gang,
>
> Does anyone out there used XP in a Virtual setting regularly?
>
> I am planning on upgrading my primary computer (new HW) which 
> currently runs XP to Linux with XP running in a virtual environment.
>
> What I want to know is what limitations there are, say with HW devices
etc.
>
> - Bill
i've been using 32-bit XP Pro under VirtualBox on 64-bit Ubuntu (Fiesty
through Hardy) for a few reasons:

- TurboTax
- Quicken
- IE for the many sites that *still* break under Firefox (TicketBastard, er,
TicketMaster, is one i use regularly, yet another reason to disklike Paule
Allen, but i digress...)
- Running an ancient version of Symantec Act until i find or build a
reasonable replacement contact manager (anyone have a script handy for
converting CSV or tab-delimited files to Evolution .vcf's?)
- Synching the excellent SplashID to my ancient Handspring Visor until i can
find a way to synch my KeePass data

My machine is a Core 2 Duo laptop w/4 GB RAM, with ReiserFS. i'm satisfied
with XP in VirtualBox to the point of reformatting the partition with Vista
Ultimate on it to get the space back (Vista Ultimate + Office 2007 Pro = >40
GB of disk suckage).

XP is very well-behaved in this environment, and performance is excellent.
Quicken and TurboTax run better than they do on Vista, without a doubt. i
find configuring VirtualBox much easier than VMWare, although the docs are a
bit thin in places. Configuring USB devices is a bit tricky - especially my
Visor, which is visible on the bus only when it's trying to synch.
Networking is great (i configured it for bridge mode so i can use my home
lan transparently), making my other partitions visible to the XP environment
is a snap. Audio works fine, with the minor annoyance that VirtualBox hogs
the audio - i can have have audio
*either* from Windows or Ubuntu, but not both. Screen-resizing is great, and
VirtualBox offers a "seamless" window mode in which the XP windows can
coexist with the Linux apps (kinda like Parallels on the Mac), although XP
taskbar positioning can make switching between XP and Linux apps less than
seamless - but it sure looks cool (in a perverse sort of
way) to see IE side-by-side with native Linux apps...

joe

________________________________________
Joe Shisei Niski
Portland, Oregon, USA








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