[fedora-virt] General Virtualization Questions

[Jorge Fábregas]

Hi,

I'm new to KVM (just got a CPU with VT-x support) so now I can finally
use QEMU/KVM properly.  I'm using Fedora 14.  Yes I know it's not
supported; I promise I won't ask for issues I'll encounter until I
upgrade to F18 when it comes out :)  (and then I'll face GNOME 3...)

Right now I've been playing with a Windows XP VM and so far so good; I
love the performance.  Since my previous experience was with VMware
Workstation/Player & VirtualBox I've got some general questions
regarding virtualization (from the point of view of a desktop user):

1) Is there an equivalent of "VMware Tools"/"Guest Additions"? I noticed
there's an ISO with the paravirtualized drivers (VirtIO) but I'm
wondering: If you're not using any of those paravirtualized drivers: is
there anything to be installed on the guest in order to integrate it
more with the host?


2) What's the standard method you guys use to transfer files between the
guest & the host?  Is drag & drop supported with Spice these days?  Do
you recreate the "Shared Folder" thing (like VirtualBox) using Samba on
the host? or do you loop mount the VM disk image when the guest is down?


3) Is sound working "out of the box" these days (F17 & F18 beta?).  I
got it working following a website (I had to put SElinux in permissive
mode, had to change the uid of the qemu process to be that of my user
and enabled vnc_allow_host_audio in qemu.conf).


4) Is SPICE the default remote-display system used these days (F17 and
forward)?  Since I'll be using QEMU/KVM on my desktop system (I'll run
all my VMs locally), is there a noticeable difference between VNC and
SPICE when you run these VMs locally?

Thanks in advance!
Jorge