Udo 'Robos' Puetz wrote:
Hi List.
I'm in contact with one of the writers for the german (large) computer
magazine c't (computer and technology) defending qemu (he neglected some
features qemu has in one of his articles). Now he asks me for an article
about what the "average user" would benefit from when he would use qemu instead
of virtual pc/vmware (their "free" products, like player, ESX ...). The
examples I named up to now where
qemu -nographic -hda linux.img -kernel linux-2.6.17.6/arch/i386/boot/bzImage
-append "console=ttyS0
root=/dev/hda ide2=noprobe ide3=noprobe ide4=noprobe ide5=noprobe" -hdb
fat:/mnt/data/Projekte/qemu/linux-test/bla
doing a little linux kernel driver development learning this way. (Good free
pdf over at oreilly)
Also, when testing OCFS2 (Oracle cluster fs 2) and not having a SAN/iSCSI
system at hand I tried this:
qemu -hda breezy.img -hdb ocsf2.img
mounting that image once
qemu -hda breezy.img -hdb ocsf2.img
and now mounting it again in a second instance of qemu with slightly
different network setup. That works with qemu, vmware desktop wouldn't take
the image a second time.
Also, a demonstration LiveCD could be made to boot on a system but also to
be played with qemu/qvm86 under win and linux (kqemu can't be re-distributed).
There would be statically built qemu's on the CD with bat/bash skripts to
start them (automatically).
Also, qemu can run happily on the server awaiting connects via vnc. But some
of the free products can do that too.
Soo, do you have any more ideas what qemu can what the (free) alternatives
from M$/VMWare can't?
Virtual PC can't handle USB _at_all_, what's the status of USB2.0 with qemu
( I think VMWare is still stuck on USB 1.1 )?
VMWare Desktop (not free) has "unlimited" snapshots IIRC, ESX just recently
got one snapshot functionality.
I can't say if I would do the article or the writer for the magazine but at
least it would make qemu more visible to (more technical inclined) people ->
good in my eyes.
Thanks for your suggestions
Cheers
Udo
Maybe qemu is not of so much use for the desktop user, but has its
strength more in the direction of a generic "computer emulator" platform
where other projects can build upon (see Argos or Free Live OS Zoo).
I'm not sure if Qemu really can compete with VMWare for a desktop
virtualization software.
In my opinion the big advantage of Qemu is that it's open source. That
makes it possible to use it as a basis for other projects; that also
makes it possible to build the Live CD you mentioned. Another point is
that an open source software is more likely to be shipped with Linux
distros (OTOH VMPlayer is already available in some Ubuntu package
repository, so this depends more on the distro maintainers). And if one
wants to have a reliable platform to run legacy applications, an open
source software has the advantage that you're not dependent on some
company that might not exist in twenty years. Another point is the
support of many host and guest platforms. But I think all this doesn't
really help the desktop user.
What I think is quite nice is the USB tablet emulation. At least VMware
requires that the VMWare tools are installed for mouse switching between
host and guest. It's quite astounding that in Qemu this works (at least
with Windows guest) without installing additional software.
So, IMHO you shouldn't try to praise Qemu as an end-user desktop
virtualization software; presenting it to more technical users seems
like a better idea.
Regards,
Oliver
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