Re: debian support and laptops
Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:50:22 -0500
> "Jeremy T. Bouse" <jeremy.bouse@undergrid.net> wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> The SVM and VMX flags are only important if you are needing to do
>> hardware virtualization. Running virtual machines has been available
>> long before these extensions to the CPU came about. The only instance
>> where you really *have* to have them (and you can't have them both
>> anyway) is usually for running Windows under virtualization hypervisors
>> like Xen. VMware can run Windows without it and I'm not certain about
>> KVM as I haven't used it myself. In the few times I've tried running
>> under hardware virtualization it seriously sucked in performance anyway.
>> I'd be more concerned about get a CPU that supported 64-bit so I could
>> run the host in 64-bit mode and have the option to run virtuals in 32-
>> or 64-bit.
>
> Disclaimer: I have never done virtualization, so take everything I say
> with a grain of salt.
>
> I understand that some virtualization technologies don't require HW
> support, but others do. Since the OP stated that he wanted to do
> virtualization, he should probably purchase a system with HW support,
> to give himself the most flexibility, unless he's already certain which
> technology he plans on using.
>
> kvm requires CPU support. My understanding is that the performance of
> qemu is much better when enhanced with kvm. virtualbox can run without
> HW support, but will / can utilize it if it's available.
I use VirtualBox (VB) for running FreeBSD without HW support, and it runs
fairly well. However, VB requires HW support for virtualizing 64-bit
operating systems. Unfortunately, I have an early model Athlon-64
that doesn't have the HW support, so I am limited to running 32 bit
operating sytems. My understanding is that all mainline AMD 64-bit
processors now have HW support, but many low and medium cost models of
Intel processors do not have the HW support.
--
Carl Johnson carlj@peak.org
Reply to: