[lug] Favorite Distro for Hosting guest OS like Windows7?

[Sean Brady]

  The name of the technology that KVM leverages (and others) is Intel VT 
(Virtualization Technology) or AMD-V.  You can find out more here: 
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_tell_if_I_have_Intel_VT_or_AMD-V.3F.  
Try the command line egrep command listed on the page to test to see if 
your processor supports virtualization with KVM.

You can also try QEMU, as well as OpenVZ or Parallels 
(http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/pd4wl/).  I think that for 
what you are doing VirtualBox would be the best bet, especially since 
you can run applications in seamless mode (so it appears to be running 
natively on your machine) .  I've used it and liked it.

I would only recommend a distro that you are comfortable with.  I know 
that VirtualBox installs on a variety of RH and Deb flavors.

On 08/11/2010 12:12 AM, siegfried wrote:
> Are there any distros that are better suited for hosting guest OS's (like
> windows 7) than other distros?
>
> I have a 2005 machine and I want to install linux to host windows 7. I need
> windows 7 to run Visual Studio 2010.
>
> According a free windows program I got from www.cpuid.com I have an Intel
> Pentium 4 640 Prescott 3.2 Ghz. Family F, Model 4 Stepping 3 Ext Family F
> Ext. Model 4 Revision NO. Instructions: MMX, SSE (1,2,3), EM64T.
>
> I think this is slightly too old to have that special firmware enhancement
> to better accommodate virtualization. What is the name of that feature?
> Virtualization extensions? Does the absence of virtualization extensions
> affect my choice of virtual box or VMWare or Fedora KVM?
>
> I want to run virtualization to run windows and once a month make a backup
> snapshot or maybe rollback to a pristine guest. (Development activity tends
> to muck things up quickly with lots of versions of tomcat, apache httpd,
> mysql etc...) This will be a development machine for IIS/Apache HTTPD,
> Java/Eclipse and C# and oracle and mysql database and even MS SQL and visual
> studio 2010. I want to install oracle on the linux and talk to it from the
> Window7 guest.
>
> Thanks,
> Siegfried
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