>
> Gentoo runs well in VMware, and I personally use it along with allot of
> other devs for testing certain things.

Gentoo does run well in vmware, but things aren't perfect. I have several
vmware GSX and ESX boxes which regularly have 2-10 gentoo instances
running and notice a few issues that the workstation users might not
be seeing:

- The 2.6.x based releases have a horrible impact on server performance.
Interrupts go up from 200/s to 3,000/s and context switches increase from
2-4K/s to 30K+.  After install, if you use a 2.4.x kernel and switch HZ to 
~30, things return to normal.

- GSX and ESX support a greater range of hardware drivers, in particular,
the vmxnet nic driver which isn't detected in 2004.3.

- vmware tools isn't in portage yet, at least last I checked.  This might not
be a big deal for those managing 1 vm, but can be quite painful if you
have dozens.

There a few other issues, but I haven't tested enough to comment on them
yet.

I have started creating my own "stage 3 vm's" which represent the 2004.3 
release media compiled to stage3 and then shut down.  New vm's are
simply cloned from here, have their identity updated, and run.

I'm not sure if it would ever make sense for people to make stage3 vm's 
availabile to others to simplify installs.  It is nice to have everything 
already done for you, and to avoid the performance hit from the initial cd 
kernel.

Regards,
Matt

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