FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:04 -0500 Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
Anything you use will be slow without the hardware virtualization support - they all have the same problem.
On Wed, 4 Mar 2009, Tom Horsley wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:04 -0500 Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
Anything you use will be slow without the hardware virtualization support - they all have the same problem.
But they aren't all as slow as vmware, nor is hardware virtualization required for a faster solution, for example Xen does very well without needing hardware support. However, due to the current development stage, xen isn't a practical solution for Fedora 10 (upstream development is usable is some circumstances but yet suitable for a wider audience), but might be ready during the lifetime of Fedora 11, or for Fedora 12.
Michael Young
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 00:54:47 +0000 (GMT) M A Young wrote:
But they aren't all as slow as vmware, nor is hardware virtualization required for a faster solution, for example Xen does very well without needing hardware support.
The original question was about running Windows XP. I've never heard of a paravirt kernel generally available for XP, and without paravirt it needs the hardware emulation (or the sort of software emulation vmware does which I didn't think xen had incorporated, but maybe I wasn't paying attention when it happened :-).
Tom Horsley wrote:
The original question was about running Windows XP. I've never heard of a paravirt kernel generally available for XP, and without paravirt it needs the hardware emulation (or the sort of software emulation vmware does which I didn't think xen had incorporated, but maybe I wasn't paying attention when it happened :-).
kqemu and VirtualBox OSE can do software virtualization in Free Software. kqemu works with QEMU and is available from RPM Fusion, VirtualBox OSE is being packaged for RPM Fusion.
Kevin Kofler
Tom Horsley wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:04 -0500 Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
Anything you use will be slow without the hardware virtualization support - they all have the same problem.
Actually, it turns out that the software virtualization is just as fast as the hardware virtualization, perhaps even faster. Lots of reasons, but one is that once the VM software rewrites a section of priviledged code, it never touches it again. With the hardware virtualization support, the VM interprets it every time it is executed.
I use VMware for WinXP. It runs reasonably fast.
Michael Eager wrote:
Actually, it turns out that the software virtualization is just as fast as the hardware virtualization, perhaps even faster. Lots of reasons, but one is that once the VM software rewrites a section of priviledged code, it never touches it again. With the hardware virtualization support, the VM interprets it every time it is executed.
For VMware that may be true, but kqemu's (the QEMU software virtualization accelerator) performance is less than stellar, KVM (hardware virtualization) is probably a lot faster (though I haven't done any direct comparison myself yet).
Kevin Kofler
On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 12:54:47AM +0000, M A Young wrote:
But they aren't all as slow as vmware, nor is hardware virtualization required for a faster solution, for example Xen does very well without needing hardware support.
Xen can't virtualize Windows without hardware support.
Rich.
On Wed, Mar 04, 2009 at 07:09:04PM -0500, Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
There's no good solution. You will be able to run qemu, in software emulation mode. Depending on how fast your processor is, and how CPU intensive your Windows session is, it'll be either acceptably slow or very slow indeed.
Rich.
Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
There's no good solution. You will be able to run qemu, in software emulation mode. Depending on how fast your processor is, and how CPU intensive your Windows session is, it'll be either acceptably slow or very slow indeed.
Pure software emulation in QEMU is extremely slow. The kqemu kernel module which you can get at RPM Fusion can help a bit. But without hardware virtualization you won't get to speeds comparable with KVM with any QEMU-based solution.
Kevin Kofler
M A Young wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2009, Tom Horsley wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:04 -0500 Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
Anything you use will be slow without the hardware virtualization support - they all have the same problem.
But they aren't all as slow as vmware, nor is hardware virtualization required for a faster solution, for example Xen does very well without needing hardware support. However, due to the current development stage, xen isn't a practical solution for Fedora 10 (upstream development is usable is some circumstances but yet suitable for a wider audience), but might be ready during the lifetime of Fedora 11, or for Fedora 12.
Linux can run paravirtualized, but XP not so much. A general problem, which is why the hardware virtual is helpful. Doesn't seem to help some things, though, the last I checked Avi told me that Win98SE did some stuff in real mode which kvm can't catch, I think VMware does, I believe I ran VMware on a 2.4 kernel "back when."
My guess is that qemu is about as good as the others, give or take 20%. I actually installed FC10 x86_64 on qemu, although it was... leisurely. Something to try, at least.
On Wed, 2009-03-11 at 18:48 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
M A Young wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2009, Tom Horsley wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:04 -0500 Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
Anything you use will be slow without the hardware virtualization support - they all have the same problem.
But they aren't all as slow as vmware, nor is hardware virtualization required for a faster solution, for example Xen does very well without needing hardware support. However, due to the current development stage, xen isn't a practical solution for Fedora 10 (upstream development is usable is some circumstances but yet suitable for a wider audience), but might be ready during the lifetime of Fedora 11, or for Fedora 12.
Linux can run paravirtualized, but XP not so much. A general problem, which is why the hardware virtual is helpful. Doesn't seem to help some things, though, the last I checked Avi told me that Win98SE did some stuff in real mode which kvm can't catch, I think VMware does, I believe I ran VMware on a 2.4 kernel "back when."
My guess is that qemu is about as good as the others, give or take 20%. I actually installed FC10 x86_64 on qemu, although it was... leisurely. Something to try, at least.
On this kind of hardware, you are likely to find that VMware Workstation is the fastest of all of the above alternatives. KVM / QEMU / Xen all require hardware virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) to run optimally. VMware was around long before this hardware feature was available - that's part of how and why they were as successful as they were. They are still by far the fastest in this hardware as well.
In addition, you will find that VMware is faster when it comes to supporting older operating systems in VMs because the older ones do not have the hooks in them to understand and leverage paravirtualization calls. KVM and especially the Xen derivatives just don't handle this as well - if at all.
I would challenge the person as saying VMware was slow - especially in this regard is misinformed at best.
Cheers,
Chris
-- ================================== By all means marry; If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
--Socrates
Bill Davidsen wrote:
the last I checked Avi told me that Win98SE did some stuff in real mode which kvm can't catch,
I believe that depends on the vendor:
According to the [Intel] VT-x spec, guest OSes cannot operate in real mode… AMD SVM, on the other hand, supports real-mode for guests… – http://lwn.net/Articles/182080/
(The article is about Xen and predates KVM, but the hardware is the same.)
Hope this helps,
James.
On 03/04/2009 07:09 PM, Jim wrote:
FC 10/KDE what is the best Virtualization program for FC10, to run Windows XP in. I understand because my AMD Athlon doesn't have a "svm" feature I can't run KVM, and VM Ware is slow ?
My experience with my HP 6125 AMD 64 laptop was that Virtualbox runs much better than my previous VMWare installaiton. Currently, Virtualbox 2.1.4 is the most current release. Initially, I installed it to run Realplayer 10. While there is a native Realplayer on Linux, the videos my wife wanted needed MSIE to authenticate, and WINE (and Crossover Office) do not support RealPlayer 10. With VMWare, the images would freeze, but with Virtualbox, it works well. However, we use VMWare Workstation at work with RHEL 5.2 as the guest OS, and performance is reasonable. I use KVM/QEMU at home with no complaints.
James Wilkinson wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
the last I checked Avi told me that Win98SE did some stuff in real mode which kvm can't catch,
I believe that depends on the vendor:
According to the [Intel] VT-x spec, guest OSes cannot operate in real mode… AMD SVM, on the other hand, supports real-mode for guests… – http://lwn.net/Articles/182080/(The article is about Xen and predates KVM, but the hardware is the same.)
Hope this helps,
A most useful article, although getting a bit dated, many of the real mode issues have been addressed in software (possibly using VM86 mode). XP runs fine under KVM, so the O.P. is free to use the hypervisor of choice.
I confess I use kvm started from command line, although I am using virt-manager in a few places where it makes sense to do so as a trade-off of complexity of install vs. complexity of operation.
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Bill Davidsen -
Christopher A Williams -
James Wilkinson -
Jerry Feldman -
Jim -
Kevin Kofler -
M A Young -
Michael Eager -
Richard W.M. Jones -
Tom Horsley