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

[Lee Woodworth]

On 08/11/10 15:07, Sean Brady wrote:
>   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.

Also check the BIOS to see if it will enable the virtualization feature. I have
here a 2009 Toshiba where the CPU has the capability, but the BIOS does not
have a setting to enable it.

> 
> 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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