** Reply to message from David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:53:30 -0700
> It sounds like things are moving to VMs for the small number of windows > apps that Linux people need. > > It just seemed like such a waste for that 4-cpu machine to sit there > occasionally running outlook. There's alot that can be done in the VM these days. For instance, I helped a business with a problem dealing with remote dev access for an old MS Access project. They spend over 8 hours on the phone with MS people regarding using MS VisualSourceSafe because they were initially told it not only had the ability to decompose MS Access forms but also would allow for remove management( internet based ). After hours of evaluating VSS on the LAN and over 8 hours on the phone, the last bit of enabling internet access was on the ToDo list as the final step. When the MS guys saw that item, they went offline( mute ), and then said VSS wouldn't do that unless they also installed the MS VisualStudio package. To make a long story shorter, I got the system working by building a server, running a VM with VSS and two VMs running just the development environments. All three VMs were "networked" within the host and on the two dev VMs, I installed VNC so the remote developers could just VNC into the local boxes VMs. There's alot of work going into optimizing and even builtin VNC like capabilities in the VM. For instance, the open sourced VirtualBox has builtin remote VM capabilities and the VMware server( free and paid ) uses VNC as it's management console. There is alot which can be done in a VM these days including some hardware access via USB or devices Linux can maintain( ttySx, lpt, etc ). Doug -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
