Desktop relevance

[jj.boland-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (John Boland)]

i have to echo the sentiment about the poor state of vmware server 2.0.
i've tried it on i386 and x86_64 h/w, various versions of fedora (and
windoze) and it does truly suck!
however, that being said, the 1.x versions work beautifully on i386 hardware
and any o/s.  the x86_64 support for any of the vmware products is
atrocious, regardless of version.
another thing that is annoying, kernel level support.  vmware doesn't seem
to support kernels above 2.25.  there are several patches that do fix the
problem (references to kernel headers when building local modules and
such).  that does leave you relying on a vendor's product that only works
with a 3rd party patch.
my virtualbox experience hasn't been good enough to get me to switch from
vmware server.  admittedly, that was going to head to head several months
ago using an xp box as the host.  i haven't been able to get virtualbox to
work on x86_64 either.

my 2 cents!

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Rich Braun <richb-RBmg6HWzfGThzJAekONQAQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I was a Unix desktop user in the early '90s so when Linux came along (end
> of
> 1992) I immediately adopted it as my home desktop.  But Windows for
> Workgroups
> came along and WINE really wasn't ready for primetime so if I wanted to use
> most (OK, virtually *all*) desktop apps starting around 1994, I had to use
> Windows.
>
> Only in the past year have I tiptoed back into Linux on the desktop, this
> time
> using VMware Server 2.0.  I did this first at the office using Ubuntu, and
> then starting about 6 months ago using openSUSE 11 at home.
>
> There have been two difficulties:
>
> - Display drivers (and a couple of other types of devices) are still
> basically
> controlled lock-stock-and-barrel by Microsoft.
> - I have not found an adequate way to get native performance out of my
> desktop
> apps, and I can't wean myself off some of them.
>
> 99% of all desktop apps are sold under Microsoft and very few are sold as
> native Linux apps.  So you have to run some sort of compatibility mode, or
> you
> have to learn to do without such things as income tax software, genalogy
> software, QuickBooks and stuff like that.  I've got a hard drive with
> decades
> of that stuff, and family members who depend on that.  It's just the modern
> reality thanks to the market-share game that Microsoft won decades ago and
> is
> not in any position to lose now.
>
> The VMware Server 2.0 solution royally *sucks*.  I hate it!  I'm almost
> ready
> to give up on it but don't want to because I like being able to copy/paste
> stuff between Linux and Microsoft apps running on a single display.  On
> both
> my office and home desktops, I find that the apps under VMware Server run
> 10x
> slower than native.  And if they talk to the Samba server, data corruption
> occasionally happens.  It's unbelievably awful.  And because it happens in
> two
> completely separate places, I have to (someday) come up with a better
> solution
> that gives me my copy/paste and reasonably simple administration.
>
> For now here is the hack I've come up with:  set up one native Windows XP
> Pro
> box (quad-core) as a timesharing terminal server.  Download a patch that
> defeats Microsoft's single-user limit so two or three people can connect
> via
> Remote Desktop Client simultaneously.  Then I don't have to deal with
> compatibility mode and the only real problem is that some stuff looks/runs
> piss-poor through RDC.
>
> I'm still rooting for Linux on the desktop.  I think there are only two
> entities that have a chance of success: the Ubuntu stuff and the openSUSE
> PackMan movement.  The latter seems to have more legs lately, no thanks to
> the
> American user (openSUSE's popularity never took off in the USA, though I've
> been using it since SUSE 6).  Seems to be a European craze.  There is
> vastly
> more desktop stuff that works under openSUSE out-of-the-box using the
> PackMan
> distro site than any of the other repositories out there.
>
> Red Hat is never gonna embrace the desktop; they put themselves somewhat at
> risk in the data center by taking their position, because people like me do
> have a bunch of desktops to support at the office and if I wind up building
> these using openSUSE then I might toy with the idea of using openSUSE on
> production servers.  For now, I'm still committed to RHEL and unlikely to
> switch to SLES.
>
> -rich
>
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-- 
If it ain't broke, you're not trying hard enough!