thinking of switching OS

[lu666s]

> I prefer to run all of my OSs at the same time rather than reboot all the time.

Not mentioning that would invalidate your uptime stats.

[voidmain]

Oh, I don't claim to have long uptimes on my desktop systems.  Not with the power going out all the time. :0

[lu666s]

Just kidding.

The 'booting' into vmware is a lot shorter than real booting and switching between OS is a matter of less than a second, that is what counts.

[voidmain]

And really it's more than just switching *between* OSs. I use several of them at the same time.  For instance, one of my kids might be farting around in Windows on the console, while I am in the living room on the laptop logged in to the linux side of it over the network, running X apps remotely (lot faster running the apps on the Athalon 1600 with lots of RAM and displaying them on my laptop over the network than running them directly on the old laptop), or I might be recompiling a kernel, or other open source code etc...

And it's a great testbed to have multiple servers up at the same time without having to have multiple physical machines.  For instance I fired up two copies of Solaris x86 to brush up on my NIS/NIS+ knowlege and testing Linux NIS connectivity with them.  Even have a copy of Win2k Server with Exchange (for connectivity testing).

One of the best parts is the ease and speed of installing the guest OS as you mention.  You don't have to go searching for all those hardware drivers for Windows because VMware exposes compatible hardware.  The installation of any Win* OS under VMware is much easier and faster than any native install.  And you don't have to repartition your drive or change your boot loader.  But the *best* part is, you never have to shut down Linux.  

[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[lu666s]

Complete agreement. I was many times sorry to spend bucks on some ware, but never for VMWare.
But I think that we should leave it at that or else people would think that VMware pays us to get new users!    

[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]

[Calum]

Okay, so where should we get VMware from, for Linux and/or Windows, and how much does it cost, because i might well be sold...

[lu666s]

VMWare for windoze ... I don't recommend. Simply because you would be running a good OS on the top of a shitty one. I am not sure, but it is somehow limited (my impression), check what it supports.

www.vmware.com
get the 30-days trial (you can extend it sorta by registering with nuther name/email before it expires in the case you did not have a chance to 'try' it out fully        )
The cost: $199

[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]

[Calum]

There's no chance i would try and run it on windows, but i like to know about these things, because I hope to have linux installed at some point, and vmware will enable me to totally remove windows from my computer. This would be ace. I really wouldn't mind paying money to not have windows on the PC, It's paying money to HAVE windows that pisses me off.

[Calum]

i just noticed that that's $199. <exagerate>I may as well buy a new real machine and install windows on that!,</exagerate>
Back to the old drawing board i suppose  

[voidmain]

Worth every penny.  Although I only paid $99, but that was the upgrade cost for 2.0 which I also originally paid $99.  I certainly don't *need* it but as someone else has mentioned here, it is one of the *few* products that is worth the admission price.  And I used it for 3 months before paying for it (just register every month with a different email address), in fact if you really wanted to cheat there probably is a license file floating around there but you know how much I hate pirating. It is very useful for me personally as I have to deal with so many different operating systems.  Most people don't.  Even if you only have to deal with one version of Windows and Linux it's worth the money just to be able to have full usability of both systems at the same time on the same machine.  

Certainly I wouldn't suggest buying it without trying it for the trial month and make your own decision.  Wish more companies gave a full uncrippled trial period.  Of course most of those software packages probably wouldn't get purchased once the trial was up because they suck.

[lu666s]

That someone was me.

I also bought the 2.0 for $99 and upgraded to 3.0 ($99). The funny part was that I bought the 2.0 for linux BEFORE (6 months) I had linux on my system. It just seemed like extremely cool idea that when I will have linux on my system, I'll can just tuck windoze away into vmware and that would be the end of reboots as I knew it.

I was right. The additional benefit of running other OS's in vmware was an icing on the cake.

There is another example:

A friend of mine was thinking about switching to Linux. The problem was that he had everything neatly configured in w2k, from FTP to backup his remote server and email server (Mercury) to apache for production purposes. He wanted to port all of it later to linux, but being right smack in the middle of a heavy production cycle, he was willing to wait 8 months or so.

I told hem about the vmware option. He was mulling over it for about a day and then he said, let's go for it. He configured the vmware windoze the same as he had his only OS, and all went as usual, except he could now explore linux while having the other OS at his mouseclick/fingertips.

After a month or so of using the vmware, he noted:
"You now what I don't get? When I was running w2k on my machine, it crashed often. Since I run it under vmware, I had not one crash. Isn't that strange?"

That is the kind of perplexion that I wish many people had.  

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]

[Calum]

The problem with the $199 is that VMWare is worth it, or so everybody is saying. There's no way i could use a fake licence in good conscience. It would be different slightly if the victims of my deceit were Sony or Microsoft par example, but for a decent piece of kit, you can't complain at paying a decent bit of dough.
This is why it distresses me that i can't actually afford $199 right now! I'll have to wait. Of course, i still haven't got linux set up yet, for 1 reason or another, so i'll worry about it when i do...

[lu666s]

Calum, no one is urging you to use a fake license. I think that VMWare guys are actually aware about 'extended' trials and let it go because the more you use it, the more you see its worth and eventually buy it. Otherwise they would use a different expiry paradigm that would disable subsequent runs.

I am an exception, since I bought it before I actually could use it. I don't think that there are many people that go for more than 2 months before buying it. The 30-days should be enough, but if you have an accident and end up in a hospital bed for 2 weeks, it is good to know that you may actually have another chance. BTW, I think that if you write vmware customer support that you did not have a achance to check the program during the trial, they would be more than happy to extend it. How about that?

[Ozymandias]

Im glad to get the info on VM software but $199 is too steep for me i think ill just do a multiboot from drives c: or d:.. But if i can work up the extra cash ill give it a shot.. I was thinking about experimenting on an older computer first with the trial version. Im sure that if it gets such strong recommendations it is probably worth my time. I know i'm kinda new at this level computing but im learning fast. Thanks for the info!