RTFM VMWare question

[Nathan Meyers]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 03:45:37PM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> Just a quick VMWare question so I don't have to learn to read :-)
> Given, Linux and Windows(9x) installed. Does VMWare install under Linux, 
> and do I need to reinstall Windows. Or do I need to install VMWare first?

Assuming you license the Linux version, VMWare installs under Linux.
You then run installations of other OSes as "guest operating systems"
under a VMWare process. I am, BTW, a satisfied VMWare user.

You can run the guest OS from an existing physical disk partition (which
addresses your situation) or create virtual drives that are, under the
covers, large files on your host OS. You can then install the guest OS to
those virtual drives, which look and feel to it like IDE or SCSI drives.

If you do run an existing Windows installation, it'll find itself (under
VMWare) talking to very different hardware than it does when running naked
- it's talking to VMWare's virtual PC instead of the usual metal. This
can get very messy - Windows will want to dump a bunch of existing
drivers and load a bunch of new drivers. For that reason, you'll want
to set up Windows "hardware profiles" before you ever boot into VMWare,
so Windows will comfortably use one set of drivers when running raw and
another when running under VMWare.

Nathan Meyers
nmeyers at javalinux.net


> The question is really twofold:
> First, My current desktop system is now tripple booting. I'm doing a test 
> install of SuSE8.0 just to make sure everything works. I use Windoz only to 
> talk to ATTBI customer disservice (which is infrequent). 
> 
> Secondly, I may purchanse a new laptop if mine is too expensive to repair, 
> and I would probably want to use VMWare. The reason is that I am teaching a 
> course in C at NEU this fall, and the last time I tought it, one of my 
> students was having trouble compiling a C program under Visual C++, which 
> was a configuration issue, but I did not have a solution. So, if I get a 
> new laptop, I should have enough cycles to run either VMWare or Win4Lin. 
> -- 
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> Associate Director
> Boston Linux and Unix user group
> http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
> PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at blu.org
> http://www.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

--