virtualising linux laptop - sled10

[wobbly1]

What's the quickest (ideally free) way to virtualise a linux laptop into workstation 6?

[jimbo45]

Not quite sure what you want to do here.

Host OS ??

Guest OS ??

IDo you already have SLED 10 installed on your laptop - Great choice if you have --it's also free BTW.

Once I've got that info I \*might* be able to answer your question.

Cheers

-J

[wobbly1]

laptop is current sled10. unfortunately working in a windows environment and all apps are windows based running windows virtual in wkstn 6 is becoming more and more difficult.

I need to virtualise the sled10 install into wkstn 6 running on winXP. the 'free' bit related to migrating - i.e. free tool or way to migrate

thanks in advance for help

[jimbo45]

Why not do it the other way round -- Virtualise the Windows XP on your SLED laptop.

You can run pretty well all windows apps you need on a Windows XP VM. I'm even running a test SAP JAVA system with a J2EE engine on a Windows VM on a laptop -- that's a HUGE application.

I can show you how to get multimedia etc on SLED 10. Unlike Windows you can get DVD playing etc for Free.

Your Windows VM will also be able to connect to any of your work networks etc just like a "Real" machine.

Hopefully your laptop has 1GB RAM as you'll need around 512 - 768MB for a decent Windows XP VM capable of running some serious apps. The host will trundle on quite happily with 256MB so long as you aren't doing to much on it.

The other advantage is that windows can get screwed up with all sorts of "upgrades" etc etc. It's fairly easy to "clone" vm's and then start again with a new Windows VM if you scre up an existing windows machine.

SLED 10 itself is as stable as a rock so I'd recommend keeping it and go the Windows VM route.

If you want more info I'll post it for you. You need to do a couple of things to SLED 10 to get everything installed OK and then it's fine.

SLED 10 is the most STABLE Linux distro I've ever used --and you don't need to have a HUGE amount of knowledge. Debian is great as well but more difficult unless you've been using Linux for a while.

Cheers

-J

[wobbly1]

I have xp as a virtual machine already along with many others and this is how I currently do things. I have two main issues though;

1. Graphic's quality within the VM's. Not sure if this is down to the graphic configuration of the SLED install - laptop is an HP nx7010 with widescreen. The quality is poor (vm tools are installed) - blurred slightly

2. I am unable to have both wireless and wired connections running at the same time - i.e. multihomed

To be honest I much prefer to stay with linux as the main o/s if I could get these two things sorted out.

[jimbo45 · Accepted solution]

Is the Native quality of your graphics on SLED OK.

One machine I'm using is a SONY VAIO laptop with the X-Brite screen running at 1050 X 1400. It's an older sony PCG-GRT816S with 1GB RAM but it has a 2.8 Pentium IV. Plenty of horsepower for a laptop --but runs very hot and battery life is really poor --but a decently powerful processor makes this a good testbed laptop.

This has a Nvidia Driver card installed with the proper (kernel) nvidia driver module. If your machine has a nvidia graphics card you should see the NVIDIA spash screen when you start the X-server.

You need to have done the Online update to get that installed on SLED .

The HP AFAIK also should have a fairly decent graphics card. If it's a nvidia card then ensure you've done the online update to get the proper nvidia driver. If you've got problems doing this post and I'll detail the steps you need to do.

Now if this is working OK install vmware tools on the guest windows and then set the display options from the control panel. Choose the best resolution.

Also set the effects to CLEARTYPE. This significantly improves the look and readability of the screens on a Windows VM (or a Windows XP Real machine)- especially if you are using that horrible TAHOMA font which windows XP uses by default.

Cheers

-J

[wobbly1]

thanks, changing to cleartype within the vm has improved the graphics issue. Now just need to sort out how to have both wireless and wired lans active at the same time

[RDPetruska]

>Now just need to sort out how to have both wireless and wired lans active at the same time

This should work. Are you talking about both network connections in your guest at the same time (i.e. 2 different network cards), or just having your host connected to both networks at the same time?

[wobbly1]

host to 2. it seems that I can have either my wired or wireless connection active but not both even though they are set to different IP addresses on different subnets. when one is up the other goes down and I don't seem to be able to up it without the other then going down - this is through both network manager and using ifup

[RDPetruska]

That's odd. But sounds like definitely a host OS thing, not a VMware-related thing. I know that on all my Windows hosts where I have both wired and wireless NICs, I can use them both at the same time.

[wobbly1]

Its at the host level under sled rather than the vm

[pwgsc]

Hi Jimbo,

Do you have a Howto for getting XP to run in a VM on SLED 10? Presently I'm in Dual boot mode but I would love to be able to run XP in a VM.

Any instructions you could provide would be great and appreciated.

Thanks

Dell 640M

1.5 GB ram

100GB HD