Darren New wrote:
> I'll have to see if I can make it run the Linux on the other partition,
> just to see. It could be pretty cool if I could get into my work
> machine's configuration for a bit without having to stop what I'm doing
> in Windows every time they want some free advice. :-)

That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than your
real machine. It's like taking the HD off and booting it on a machine with
completely different CPU, motherboard, network card, graphics card...

At least Windows would pop up a dozen "new hardware detected" messages :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than your
> real machine. 

Oh. I wasn't aware it was an emulator rather than a VM.

I'll give it a go and watch it crash and burn anyway. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but
>> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which
>> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)
> 
> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
> Windows host...

"I've been thinking of playing with some VM technology" kind of implies 
  I haven't already, you see. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than
>> your real machine.
> 
> Oh. I wasn't aware it was an emulator rather than a VM.

VMware, VirtualBox, and VirtualPC are VMs. QEMU is a CPU emulator.

Being a VM means they virtualize rather than emulate the CPU, but usually
not much more. The graphics processor, sound card, network card, etc. are
still emulated (access efficiently forwarded to the real hardware, but the
guest OS still doesn't see the real hardware).

Heck, VMware Workstation even lets you simulate packet loss in the virtual
network cards :)

Same for HD and memory. A tool like CPU-Z wouldn't be able to see the real
manufacturer of the RAM sticks. The RAM in the guest OS is actually a
memory-mapped file in the host OS hard disk. The guest OS hard disk is
usually just a big file too; no way the guest OS can see real SMART data
from the physical disk.

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>> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
> 
> They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
> machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your real
> CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.

Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> VMware, VirtualBox, and VirtualPC are VMs. QEMU is a CPU emulator.

QEMU apparently allows you to emulate different CPUs for that matter... 
It appears to have emulation for Motorola 68000 for example.

> Being a VM means they virtualize rather than emulate the CPU, but usually
> not much more. The graphics processor, sound card, network card, etc. are
> still emulated.

To be honest, I'm surprised that QEMU can exist. I would have expected 
the emulated CPU to be maybe 1,000,000x slower than the real one, which 
would of course be unusably slow. But somehow they've made it not be 
that slow - and given it away for free too.

(I am still constantly amazed at the amount of high-quality software you 
can pick up for free these days. Emulating an entire IBM PC must surely 
be many man-centuries of development work...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
> Windows host...

I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that 
any free ones existed for Windoze.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Stephen" <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote in message 
news:ucjlb4l1ddf87j4lves2ms6p2hgf8i7cra@4ax.com...

>
> You have a blog dedicated to SQL?

Yup. For over a year now. It's surprising how the hits have grown, 
especially over the last 3 months

> Is that so you don't use this forum for Haskel
> Oops! Sorry Andrew :)
>

Somehow I don't think too many people here would be interested in a deep 
discussion on the internals of the query optimiser. ;-)

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba1c1$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
>>
>> They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
>> machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your 
>> real
>> CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.
>
> Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?

Not at all. VirtualPC is what I'm using on my destop. I run  it on my laptop 
as well. VMWare (workstation) will run on any modern PC with a compatible 
processor (virtually all of the intel and AMD chips)
That's the whole point of virtual machines, they don't need specialised 
hardware

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba2b7$1@news.povray.org...
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
>> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on 
>> a
>> Windows host...
>
> I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that any 
> free ones existed for Windoze.
>

VirtualPC and VirtualServer are both free. I don't know offhand if they will 
run *nix. I've seen some web sites that say it's possible, never tried 
myself.
VMWare's ESXi is free now, though that's a server-level product, not 
necessarily something for a desktop. Should be able to run on a desktop. 
Definitly supports Linus at lease asa  guest OS

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