On Friday 03 November 2006 11:18, jdd wrote: > J Sloan a écrit : > > I have zero interest in running a captive toy linux session on ms > > windoze. Linux runs best on the bare metal, but running "linux" as > > a program on an ms windoze peecee gains nothing, but carries costs > > and risks. > > there are very big advantages to this. > > think at all the schools and formation instaitutes that use > dayly windows machines and don't mind to install linux on > then, how can you teach Linux there? the best way is running > virtual machine on top of windows. > > I do so for years, now, but VMware is extremely expensive.
VMWare server is $free$ (though not libre). The Workstation and other VMware products are still very pricey, as they always were, but it's no longer necessary to give any money to VMware Inc. to use their virtualization technology. Also, as another reference point, Parallels (<http://www.parallels.com/>) has virtualization that can be hosted on Windows or Mac OS X (for Intel processors only) and can host any Intel operating system, including a variety of Linuxes. Parallels is far cheaper than the cheapest non-free VMware product. They are not directly comparable (from a technological standpoint, Parallels uses paravirtualization, as Xen does), but I think the existence of Xen and Parallels is putting significant market pressure on VMware, which is a good thing. For a long time they (VMware) were the only game in town (the obsolescent VirtualPC notwithstanding). Now that's far from true. > Xen on Windows should be a very good news, for example... I'd say so, though I still prefer to corral Windows within Linux and Mac OS X, as I do with my VMware and Parallels setups. If I had the cash to throw around, right now I'd explore using a Mac Pro (which has two dual-core Xeons and a 1067 MHz FSB) to host all my computing. Given at least 4GB of RAM and a hard drive-per-OS, I'd set up Mac OS X (possibly the Server variant) and use Parallels to host both SuSE Linux and Windows XP Pro. (As it stands, I had just put together a new Core 2 Duo box when my employer eliminated my group, so with no cash flow, the dollar-intensive experimentation has been brought to a rapid, though temporary halt.) All in all, I rather detest Microsoft, but I also acknowledge that as a professional (a software professional, no less) I cannot realistically afford to boycot MS entirely. Instead I apply a containment strategy. > jdd Randall Schulz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
