Good Alternative To Running A Virtual Machine

[Richard-BKK]

The situation is that I need to use some MS Windows software on a daily base, for the last few years I used virtual machine software (VMware Desktop and later VirtualBox) to run MS Windows. Still, even if I run a not so demanding program it always takes a good amount of my processor performance.

Even on a Intel i7 computer, with 16GB memory, running 32-bits MS Windows 7 in a virtual machine and doing some serious processing on the Linux host system brings the system performance down dramatically.

Recently, one of our older computers (socket 775 Q6600) had some problems and one of our technicians bought a Asrock G31M-VS2, which is basically the last socket 775 mainboard you can buy at Panthip. To no surprise the original mainboard was not the problem of the computer problem so I had a spare Asrock G31M-VS2 mainboard, also I found that our IT had a Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 and DDR2 seems never been a problem… So I created a little system with an Intel E6550 Core 2 Duo and 3GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive. Installed MS Windows on it and setup a remote desktop link to my Linux desktop computer, the result is that the performance of my Linux desktop computer absolutely not influenced by what MS Windows is doing… Still I have a similar Windows on my desktop to see what MS Windows is doing… and I easily can communicate with my MS Windows Desktop and share files as easily as I did before…

[Kozz]

U can try to install Wine, wich emulates windows programs and see if it works. Not everything works well, if at all, but it doesnt suck up ur processor performance like a VM does.

[Richard-BKK]

We also use the commercial version of Wine, which is Crossover from Codeweavers. It works very well, but as you said not all programs work with Wine/Crossover...

[JakeBKK]

Codeweavers gave licenses away for free a while ago.

[sweer]

You can try to use Xen Hypervisor with gplv drivers for windows.

[JakeBKK]

Richard-Bkk: i run a couple of virtual machines on as similar platform without a hassle. A common mistake is to simply install a standard windows version with all the bells and whistles. This simply produces heaps of unnecessary load inside the virtual machine. There are stripping tools out there, allowing you to build a custom win 7. The standard install takes about 16 gb, but it is possible to get as low as 1,5 gb - this gives your host as well as your virtual box kinda impressive performance !

[Richard-BKK]

Maybe some people did misunderstand me, I not really have a problem with running a virtual machine. I just found a way to run it faster by not using virtual machine software but by using a remote desktop connection to a small computer which runs MS Windows 7 (it has actual no screen, keyboard or mouse), I control it completely from a window on my Linux desktop.

The benefits, the system uses its own 320gb harddrive and 3gb dedicated memory (the graphic memory is shared so not all is available to the OS) still the system is much faster than the average virtual machine.

I still use some virtual machines, for example to run Android, OSX, OpenIndiana and a good old MS Windows XP (for Win XP I still use VMware Desktop)....

[Bender]

Maybe some people did misunderstand me, I not really have a problem with running a virtual machine. I just found a way to run it faster by not using virtual machine software but by using a remote desktop connection to a small computer which runs MS Windows 7 (it has actual no screen, keyboard or mouse), I control it completely from a window on my Linux desktop.

The benefits, the system uses its own 320gb harddrive and 3gb dedicated memory (the graphic memory is shared so not all is available to the OS) still the system is much faster than the average virtual machine.

I still use some virtual machines, for example to run Android, OSX, OpenIndiana and a good old MS Windows XP (for Win XP I still use VMware Desktop)....

so you just need 2 computer...

congratulation you just invented ... super computer

Edited July 24, 2012 by Bender

[JakeBKK]

Maybe some people did misunderstand me, I not really have a problem with running a virtual machine. I just found a way to run it faster by not using virtual machine software but by using a remote desktop connection to a small computer which runs MS Windows 7 (it has actual no screen, keyboard or mouse), I control it completely from a window on my Linux desktop.

The benefits, the system uses its own 320gb harddrive and 3gb dedicated memory (the graphic memory is shared so not all is available to the OS) still the system is much faster than the average virtual machine.

I still use some virtual machines, for example to run Android, OSX, OpenIndiana and a good old MS Windows XP (for Win XP I still use VMware Desktop)....

so you just need 2 computer...

congratulation you just invented ... super computer

ROTFL!

[bendejo]

An old joke from yester-year: if you want multi-tasking then get multiple computers.