FC14 good/bad news

Robert Myers rbmyersusa at gmail.com
Sat Nov 27 23:23:13 UTC 2010


On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> wrote:
> I installed FC14 in a VM, on a 7.7GB disk image. After that was installed and
> tested to some extent, I copied the image to an 8GB SD memory and booted off it.
> Worked with the micro-SD in an adaptor to full size SD, and in a micro-SD to USB
> nubbin. When I installed I made the filesystems ext2 to avoid beating the
> storage, other than that stock install.
>
> Now I can select enhanced effects for video, and they work fine (for values of
> fine considering I wanted to see if they work, not that I want them on).
> However, the display is still dog slow, glxgears runs at 60fps, video is jerky,
> etc. So the "better" video now doesn't crash, does provide effects I don't need,
> and is still too slow to be useful, even on a non-game machine. So much for not
> using vendor drivers.
>
> System is i7-950, 12GB RAM, Radeon HD 4350 video, used as a VM host most of the
> time. Not a killer machine, not a dog.
>
> I will be doing some testing to see if the newer KVM is any better in a
> measurable way, but when VNC to a machine with fast video is better than
> console, there is room for improvement.
>

Sorry that I've just noticed your original post.

You may remember that I've posted elsewhere that I've talked about
being very pleased with core i7-920 supporting a mixture of guests,
with a Radeon video card.  All of that reported experience uses
Windows Vista as the host and VMWare software to run the guest
operating systems.

I had previously tried using Fedora as the host OS, and I am now
determined to wait for a viable bare metal hypervisor before trying
any further experiments.

The Windows Vista/VMWare guest setup appears to involve a fair bit of
baling wire and chewing gum, with the need to install VMWare "tools"
that are *very* specific to the guest OS.  Windows XP runs noticeably
better as a guest than does Fedora (surprise, surprise).  Windows XP
integrates seamlessly with the sound card.  For Fedora, the fact that
I don't really need a sound card is a big plus (it works, but it's
clunky).

For everyday operations, though, it's hard to tell that I'm using a
virtual machine, even when the virtual machine is acting as an
x-server for a remote box.  If I were to continue trying to use Fedora
as a virtual host at this point, I'd see it as my contribution to what
is obviously a very immature software technology.  The hardware
appears to be more than up to the task.

Robert.


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