How slow will XP running in a Linux Virt machine?

[SBSP]

Hi.
Has anyone ever ran Windows XP on a virtual machine?

If had to install a linux system with fluxbox which doesnt take much recources and only have needed
services running.

Will it be a usable as a everyday system ?

[Kasyx]

It depends on the amount of memory alloted to it, however on a decent machine, I doubt you would have a problem. With 2gb of RAM, I was able to run XP seamlessly integrated into my GNOME desktop (Ubuntu) using VirtualBox and had no issues with it at all, in fact it ran about as well as having XP installed natively.

[SBSP]

Thanks that is what i want to hear

Does VirtualBox support USB ?

[Kasyx]

As far as I recall it does. Supports pretty much everything, as far as I am aware, as of the latest patch it even supports direct third-party graphics cards, meaning (in theory) you can use a VirtualBox XP install to play games.

[hamin_aus]

Why not use VMWare GSX?

GSX is free and pretty good.
I have only used the Windows version, but how much worse could the 'nix build be

http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/ ... n_gsx.html

[WAJeff]

I'll be honest with you SBSP, I've tried running Vbox as well as VMware on my nix install and tried to get XP running nicely and I only got kinda there....
Regarding USB support, you will have to set this up if your using Vbox, not sure about VMware. You need to add the Vbox user to have 755 rights on a USB device. I've been able to run my active XP partition via VM which was pretty cool... but again - it gets slow

Give it a shot, its different hardware dependant

[SBSP]

Hi thanks.

Reason I ask is.

If XP running in a virtual machine runs fine.
You could easily set up desktop machines with fluxbox and run XP automatically and have a backup image of XP to restore if something goes wrong. in a matter of a few mins

Since its a virtual machine all the virtual hardware is the same so you can have one image for all PC's
So when something breaks you can just restore the Virtual PC image.


I used MS Virtual PC to test but it doesnt support USB.

So what do you think? Why is other people not doing this ?

And thanks Jamin for the VM ware link my first option was to go for VMware but i realised you need to pay for it when i went on their website.

I will check it out but i have an idea its not going to be free for corporate use.

I think you dont even need a window manager to do this , maybe you will need one to do the initial setup of the Virtual machine, But you can loac graphical applications by running E.G

Code: Select all

xinit virtualbox

[hamin_aus]

And thanks Jamin for the VM ware link my first option was to go for VMware but i realised you need to pay for it when i went on their website.

I will check it out but i have an idea its not going to be free for corporate use.

No problem, bru.

ESX is the version you pay for.

GSX is free no matter what environment you use it on. We run a lot of our Dev and DR boxes as VM's using GSX and dont pay anything.