Vmware server seems to run XP at about 50% of native performance (rough visual estimate) - this is if the VM support flags are on or off in the BIOS, so not sure if Vmware is really taking good advantage of this.
>From what I have seen the virtualisation support is pretty much the same across the VM products, this is the first system where I would say I'm close to it being usable but I know there is unlocked potential there - hence the Xen experiment I've got a new desktop machine coming tomorrow (even more powerful than the laptop!) - as this is a clean system I'll put Xen on from scratch. If this is a success I'll switch the laptop environment. I'm intending to virtualise under Fedora 8 (base install) as the host OS and then as Guest the following Virtual machines : 1) Fedora 8 - as a development environment 2) Mac OS (Hackint0sh) - just because I can and it's pretty! 3) Windoze XP - because I have to (for certain VPN access and compatability testing) 4) Windoze Vista - just to see what it is like (and then have the intense satisfaction of deleting it when I find out how bad it really is) Here is the cpuinfo (it's a 2.5GHz not 2.4 as I said before), the important bit for virtualisation (I believe) is the vmx flag which is apparent [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz stepping : 6 cpu MHz : 800.000 cache size : 6144 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 10 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 lahf_lm ida bogomips : 4991.68 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz stepping : 6 cpu MHz : 800.000 cache size : 6144 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 1 cpu cores : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 10 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 lahf_lm ida bogomips : 4987.23 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: VMWare server doesn't give you any closer binding to the hardware but XEN does as it is a custom kernel - I emphasize that this is an experiment that may go horribly wrong. As I am doing this on a clean install (and subsequently disposable) system I'm not too worried Wish me luck Martin Martin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Rogers Sent: 09 April 2008 11:31 To: Peterborough LUG - No commercial posts Subject: Re: [Peterboro] Linux Laptops Martin Nix wrote: > I'll be cutting over to Xen (for some more hardcore virtualisation) > sometime in the next couple of weeks so will let you all know if it > rocks or not > What's the virtualisation (eg Intel VT) support like on current laptop CPUs? As I understand it, to get very far with Xen you really need that, but it never crossed my mind that the functionality would be creeping into laptops. You can check easily enough by looking at the flags in the output from cat /proc/cpuinfo For the uninitiated, with Xen the virtual machine is much closer to running on the real hardware than is always the case with VMWare and similar products. This means either that the guest O/S has to support virtualisation within the O/S itself and be prepared to effectively multi-task with other operating systems (Linux can be built with this support, but not an option with XP), or else the CPU needs additional functionality to allow the multiple O/S's to share the CPU with each O/S thinking it is the only O/S on the machine. I think VMWare Server also supports this, and it should give better performance than "bog standard" VMWare, but at the cost of requiring the right CPU support and being a more fundamental change in the way things work. I understand, but could be wrong, that one of the benefits of this whole change is that the virtualised O/S sees the real hardware, including graphics card? I'd appreciate confirmation or correction on that. PS: useful info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
