Which Virtual Machine to run windows on linux?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:08 pm

I want to try out ubuntu on my next pc build, but also want to see how much of a performance hit running a virtual machine of windows in linux would be. Can anyone suggest to me what software i should use? Does it matter what file system i format my drive with? i would likely use the default ext3 that ubuntu uses. Id want to run a virtual windows XP pro SP3.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:25 pm

Are you after a hypervisor recommendation, or performance testing software recommendation?

The physical disk format should not matter - storage is virtualised, so you can have a FAT32-formatted virtual disk stored on a physical ext3 partition. I'd go with whatever physical format offers the best performance for the host OS (in your case Ubuntu).

If you run a 64 bit host OS, you can 32 and 64 bit guest OSes, but if you choose a 32 bit host OS you can only run 32 bit guest OSes. I've been running VMware Server 2 on Ubuntu Server 8.10 (with ubuntu-desktop) 64 bit. Works fine. Probably some tuning I could do to speed things up, but it's been good so far. VMware Server is recommended to be installed on Ubuntu Server rather than Ubuntu Desktop, hence why I went with Server + gnome rather than just the Desktop version of Ubuntu for my host OS.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:58 pm

i dont know the difference between hypervisor and performance testing.

I mostly want to play some games. I dont play anything that is hardware intensive, so i figure even with the performance hit of using Virtual Machine it should still run OK. Mostly Blizzard entertainment games (except wow) and COD4.

I've heard of people using something called wine to run games, but i hear its hit or miss, and sometimes buggy. Id rather have stable and slower than buggy and faster.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:17 pm

Gotcha. I wasn't sure if you were after a recommendation for virtualisation software, like VMware Server, Windows emulation software like wine, or some software to test the performance of native vs virtual Windows, to determine which would be faster.

I haven't used wine, but it's an alternative to deploying a virtual machine running Windows. You could try both, and see which gives the more stable/playable experience.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:37 pm

does windows virtual pc run on linux?

Everything i've read says the biggest performance hit is from your storage subsystem. I plan on going to the new Intel X25-m 80gb SSD for my next system, so i feel this wont be a huge issue to slow down a VM.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:54 pm

Windows Virtual PC is Windows only. VMWare Server is free though.

I'm using a VelociRaptor 300GB - performance is fine. Slowest performance is starting a paused VM, but starting a powered-off VM is very good - but the guest OS still needs to boot. A paused VM needs to have it's state read from disk which takes a little while - still under a minute on my machine.

VMs can be either powered down or paused when you shut down the host machine - so you don't need to reboot your Windows VM every time you want to use it - you can just pause it and shut down your host PC.

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:59 pm

You might want to check out VirtualBox.

VirtualPC DID run on linux, and OSX until Microsoft bought the company and gutted the software.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:08 pm

So any major differences between VB and VMware? Any performance difference? Do both support 64bit processing?

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 1:39 am

The biggest problem with visualization is that the hardware acceleration for 3d games doesn't work. Not in VirtualBox or VMWare.
This is something wine can do, but as you already said, it is not always perfect.

proc · Post by **proc** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 3:21 am

You won't be able to play 3D games on vmware. Infact windows will see a vmware graphic adapter not your video card. I don't have experience with qemu, but you could google arount a bit.
Anyway I would recommend to try wine first.

P.S. I run 14 virtual machines with different windows versions (2000, 2003 server, XP, 2003 storage server) in the company I work for, and another issue we encountered is poor quality USB support.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 3:46 am

Hi,

Another possibility to go is CrossOver by CodeWeavers. It allows you run many (but not all) Windows programs in Linux without actually installing Windows. VM Ware requires that you own and install Windows.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

bevan.coleman · Post by **bevan.coleman** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 7:43 pm

Aris wrote: I mostly want to play some games. I dont play anything that is hardware intensive, so i figure even with the performance hit of using Virtual Machine it should still run OK. Mostly Blizzard entertainment games (except wow) and COD4.

I've heard of people using something called wine to run games, but i hear its hit or miss, and sometimes buggy. Id rather have stable and slower than buggy and faster.

Games inside a Virtual Machine are going to perform really, really badly, if at all. They emulate large amounts of the system (I/O, video, sound, network, etc...) and 3d support is more or less non existent.

VMWare does have alpha 3d emulation support, but it doesn't sound like its stable. In fact it sounds like it will probably crash your linux machine more often then not.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=84344

Wine (Wine is not an emulator) is always going to be faster. Because.... it's not an emulator

It simply provides windows applications with the the APIs they are expecting and wries them streight into the linux ones. This means the over is minimal and 3d support works quite well.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 2:54 pm

sjoukew wrote:The biggest problem with visualization is that the hardware acceleration for 3d games doesn't work. Not in VirtualBox or VMWare.

Well i guess that nix's that idea. I didnt realize hardware acceleration didnt work with virtualization.

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:40 pm

Aris wrote:I mostly want to play some games.

If you're only going to be using Windows for gaming, then why not set up your system to dual boot into Windows and Linux. You're probably not going to need to multitask with Linux apps while gaming anyway.

I can see how having to reboot to play games might not be ideal, but running them natively under Windows will provide the best performance and compatibility by far.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:23 pm

Cryoburner wrote:then why not set up your system to dual boot into Windows and Linux.

I was under the impression that to dual boot i would have to set up a FAT32 filesystem, and i dont want to do that. I'd prefer to use ext3 or ext4 filesystem.

sNNooPY · Post by **sNNooPY** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:05 am

Go for Virtualbox. It's free, it has a good developer's community - and the backing of Sun Microsystems.
I run it under Vista to run Fedora. Works like a charm.
It runs very good on Linux also.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:49 pm

Why not flip things and run the Linux virtualized under Windows? That way, no messing around with dual-boot.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 2:23 pm

I was under the impression that to dual boot i would have to set up a FAT32 filesystem, and i dont want to do that. I'd prefer to use ext3 or ext4 filesystem.

Cant you use NTFS.?, it is at least reliable. Ideally you would want 2 HDD's for performance and reliability, but you knew that anyway - you just didnt want the extra noise and power and thought virtualisation was a perfect solution.

I built myself a server because I learned that a mass storage box / general PC / Gaming rig all in one just didnt work. I expect that you will either end up with a dual boot PC or 2 PC's - its not always viable to mix business and pleasure.

Andy

bevan.coleman · Post by **bevan.coleman** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:01 pm

Aris wrote:
Cryoburner wrote:then why not set up your system to dual boot into Windows and Linux.
I was under the impression that to dual boot i would have to set up a FAT32 filesystem, and i dont want to do that. I'd prefer to use ext3 or ext4 filesystem.

No, it doesn't affect your file systems at all.

Generally what I do is boot up linux and use it's partition tools to allocate the space. Then install windows, and then linux.

Use a linux bootloader like grub, because they are more flexiable then the Windows one (which more or less expects to be the only OS)

Say you had a 250GB hdd;

100MB /boot (ext2)
1 GB or so for /swap (swap)
40GB for / (ext3 for linux OS and some apps)
100GB for NTFS Windows OS and games

rest (~100GB) for general/shared (fat32)

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 6:19 pm

Well i've been talking to some of my "more experienced" tech buddies that i work with, and have been told dual booting is a bad idea. That it would work at first, but that id develope issues with it in just a few months and have to reinstall both OS's every 3-6 months.

If dual booting is this unstable, id really rather avoid that.

One thing that was suggested to me, and jesse mentioned it also, is running ubuntu inside a VB on a winxp pro installation. but i have some questions about this aprouch. Are there any downsides to doing it like this?

Some of the reasons i wanted to run linux in the first place was for better memory management, better disk management, less bloatware, a faster more effecient filesystem, and the use of opensource software.

Would i lose any of those aspects of linux if i ran it inside a virtualization? How does a filesystem work inside VB? Is there a section of the HDD that the VB software allocates as ext3 for the linux install?

The one other configuration that was brought up to me was to just run two systems. One with windows and one with linux. While this is an option id really like to have everyone on one main machine.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:37 pm

Aris wrote:Well i've been talking to some of my "more experienced" tech buddies that i work with, and have been told dual booting is a bad idea. That it would work at first, but that id develope issues with it in just a few months and have to reinstall both OS's every 3-6 months.

Ask them if you used separate drives for each OS, would it be better? (if you don't mind...im curious)

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:40 pm

xan_user wrote:Ask them if you used separate drives for each OS, would it be better? (if you don't mind...im curious)

...that was my thoughts too! They're probably just used to rebuilding Windows in a corporate environment.

bevan.coleman · Post by **bevan.coleman** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:46 pm

Aris wrote:Well i've been talking to some of my "more experienced" tech buddies that i work with, and have been told dual booting is a bad idea. That it would work at first, but that id develope issues with it in just a few months and have to reinstall both OS's every 3-6 months.

If dual booting is this unstable, id really rather avoid that.

Err.... what a load of BS. Dual booting is no more stable or unstable then having a single boot.

I suggest you find better techy friends!

Would i lose any of those aspects of linux if i ran it inside a virtualization? How does a filesystem work inside VB? Is there a section of the HDD that the VB software allocates as ext3 for the linux install?

The effect on your linux install is that it will now have to access your hardware via an emulation layer. This will make it slower. You also have 2 O/S in memory at one time being the host (windows XP in your example) and teh guest (Linux).

The VM will emulate your hdd using a very large file (many, many GBs). But as far as your guest OS knows... it's just a HDD.

bevan.coleman · Post by **bevan.coleman** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:47 pm

xan_user wrote:
Aris wrote:Well i've been talking to some of my "more experienced" tech buddies that i work with, and have been told dual booting is a bad idea. That it would work at first, but that id develope issues with it in just a few months and have to reinstall both OS's every 3-6 months.

Ask them if you used separate drives for each OS, would it be better? (if you don't mind...im curious)

It makes no difference at all.... dual booting doesn't affect stability in the slighest.

I've been doing it for 10+ years now, booting various versions of Windows and Linux.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:37 pm

bgiddins wrote:
xan_user wrote:Ask them if you used separate drives for each OS, would it be better? (if you don't mind...im curious)
...that was my thoughts too! They're probably just used to rebuilding Windows in a corporate environment.

Yea he does work in a corporate environment.

So no stability issue's whatsoever with long term (3+ years) dual booting of an NTFS file system alongside an ext3 filesystem?

I was planning on putting this on the new 80gb intel SSD, so i was originally planning on putting both OS's on the same drive. I figured since the major reason for using 2 seperate drives was to avoid latency issues, and with an SSD that would eliviate any latency issues. Is their a stability issue though with two or more filesystems on the same drive?

I was also wondering you guys' thoughts on what size partitions to use for each operating system. The only thing going on the NTFS partition is XP Pro SP3 and MAYBE 20gb of space for games. As for the ext3 filesystem, it would be ubuntu 8.10 with all the software that comes with it and around 10gb of mp3's.

I've also heard about having a third FAT32 partition as a go between for files for both operating systems. The only thing i would ever boot into XP for is to play a game, everything else i would do in linux, including to play music. So can you think of any reason to have a third partition? Would it be a good idea to have a small 2-5gb partition just for "what if" crap that i may want to use between the two of them?

If i download a file in ubuntu or xp, can i copy it to the fat32 partition? And then at that point can i then copy that file from the fat32 partition to the other operating system and use it there?

jack_aubrey · Post by **jack_aubrey** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:56 pm

Aris wrote:So no stability issue's whatsoever with long term (3+ years) dual booting of an NTFS file system alongside an ext3 filesystem?

Stability issues, no. It's not like the MBR is going to suddenly get corrupted simply because it contains an a different bootloader or entries for multiple OSes.

What you may want to be a bit careful of is when reinstalling Windows (if you ever do), such that it doesn't overwrite the Linux-installed bootloader. OTOH Linux installs and upgrades are generally very good about respecting previously installed bootloader entries.

lm · Post by lm » Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:02 am

Aris wrote:So no stability issue's whatsoever with long term (3+ years) dual booting of an NTFS file system alongside an ext3 filesystem?

That's total bull.

I've had dual boot between windows and linux for about 10 years, and had no issues with it ever.

How could I? Windows does not access the linux partitions in any way, and Linux only does what I tell it to do.

Here's the few gotchas that I have run into, however:

1) Installing Windows XP SP2 from a fresh CD to a system that already had a Linux partition. The installer starts by saying "inspecting your system" and then gets stuck forever. This used to work out of the box when the installer CD was not SP2.

Fix: Just change the partition type of any linux partitions temporarily to "DA Non-FS data" from f.ex. cfdisk in linux. Then change them back to what ever they were at first, after you have completed installation of windows. Was really weird at first, but never had any problems with it after installation was completed.

2) Installing any version of Windows on a computer will erase your bootloader.

Fix: Use any Linux live cd after installing windows, to reinstall the bootloader. Otherwise you can only boot to windows.

Alternative fix: Install Windows first, then Linux. Use linux installer first to make the partitions, because Windows installer is really limited with it's partitioning features.

3) Linux can not write to NTFS filesystems, but it can read them.

(This might no longer be the case, I haven't researched into it lately)

Fix: Make an extra partition with some FAT* for data exchange.

Alternative fix: Install ext2 filesystem driver to windows (I would not recommend that, since I don't trust Windows and I rather have it not capable of accessing my linux).

There's NOTHING preventing you from doing dual boot between Windows and Linux on a single hard drive.

My setup on my main system is: 300GB Velociraptor with this partition setup:

sda1: 256MB Linux /boot
sda2: 84GB Linux root filesystem, ext3
sda3: 16GB Linux swap
sda4: 200GB Windows NTFS

Both live happily on the same hard drive with no issues. And there really can't be any issues. It's very likely that people who say otherwise don't understand how filesystems and partitions work in operating systems.

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 11:09 am

I do quite a bit with Virtualization at home and for work- in your case, I'd suggest something like VMWare Workstation (not server), since it has recently added tolerable support for USB, Audio, and Direct X 9.0. Xen and other Linux hypervisors are quite good, but they're aimed more at servers and people who need a development sandbox.

You can download a 30-day evaluation version of VMware Workstation here.

Don't expect miracles on game performance- while it will work with some games along the lines of Spore, Civilization, or Rome Total War, most first person shooters will be unplayable. (Which is also true of VMware Fusion).

The wikipedia article on linux virtualization is worth a read.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 3:24 pm

Aris wrote: Would i lose any of those aspects of linux if i ran it inside a virtualization? How does a filesystem work inside VB? Is there a section of the HDD that the VB software allocates as ext3 for the linux install?

Yeah, you'd lose pretty much all the benefits. The reason people run Linux inside of Windows is usually if they are developers and want to see if an application works right in both OS. I had suggested it to you since I thought you just wanted to play around with it. Looks like dual boot does make more sense for you.