The more I play with Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 [virtualpcadditions, virtualpc2007], the more I appreciate the effort from MS, and the more I become disappointed with the Linux guest OS performance on my P4 Prescott-based WinXP machine.
I installed the SimplyMEPIS Linux distro in Virtual PC 2007, and tried to get the performance up to a level comparable to VMWare. Microsoft makes "Virtual Machine Additions for Linux" available for Virtual Server 2005, so I tried them in Virtual PC 2007.
The VM Additions are provided in RPM format, but MEPIS uses deb packages. To install the VM Addition RPMs, you'll need the app alien, which is included in MEPIS, as well as the kernel headers package. You'll also want to install the rcconf package.
Once you get the iso from MS, mount it and copy the files to a local folder. Do not run the vmadd-install.run script - most of the VM Additions are useless in Virtual PC. Instead, just install the kernel and X11 packages by opening a root terminal, and typing:
alien -icv vmadd-kernel-module-0.0.1-1.i386.rpm
alien -icv vmadd-kernel-x11-0.0.1-1.i386.rpm
/etc/init.d/vmadd start
You'll see an error regarding chkconfig, which is not included on debian-based distros. Just run lcconf, find vmadd in the list, and select it to run at startup.
Unfortunately, the VM Additions don't seem to have much a performance effect at all. As a matter of fact, the X11 driver is incompatible with recent versions of Xorg, including the one in MEPIS. The mouse driver works, if you copy it from /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/mouse_drv.o to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/mouse_drv.so, but it seems hardly worth the effort.
One thing that does help performance, however, is changing the Linux clock timing. In MEPIS, I was getting a bunch of weird double-character typing issues, as well as network stalls. Adding the parameter clock=pit to the kernel boot line in grub (or lilo) fixed both issues.
In conclusion, if you want a high performance Virtual Machine on a single core host, look elsewhere. However, if stability and ease of use are more important than speed, Virtual PC 2007 is a very nicely polished VM to try. Just don't bother installing the VM Additions for Linux.
I'd love to know how it runs on a dual core machine.
Microsoft just released Virtual PC 2007 as a free download. Like VMWare ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
, Virtual PC 2007 lets you install several operating systems on one PC at the same time. I decided to try it out today and compare it to VMWare's free VMWare Player.
VPC07 installs nicely, and is unobtrusive. Unlike VMWare, it doesn't seem to install any background services. (VMWare runs four services in the background whether you use a VM or not.) Configuration was simple and typical Microsoft - just a basic properties dialog, and no VMWare-style text file edits. Booting from an iso is extremely straightforward.
VPC07 is tailored to run variants of Windows, but I decided to try a few versions of Linux instead, including Kubuntu, SimplyMEPIS, ZenWalk, and Puppy Linux. MEPIS and Puppy ran perfectly on the first try, but Kubuntu and ZenWalk both needed the DefaultDepth value in xorg.conf to be changed from 24 to 16. Apparently, VPC07 emulates the S3 Trio video chipset, but does not support 24-bit color. This fakes out some video auto-detection scripts.
Unlike VMWare Player, VPC07 allows you to switch between windowed mode and full screen. However, sometimes my WinXP start menu bar would pop up on top of full screen virtual sessions. And as with other full screen apps that change the video resolution (i.e. games), all of my WinXP desktop windows and icons were moved and resized.
In all cases, Linux ran noticably slower under VPC07 than VMWare. And the heavier the desktop, the slower it ran. KDE-based desktops like Kubuntu and MEPIS were the slowest, with the XFCE-based ZenWalk being faster, and Puppy's tiny JWM running at nearly native speed.
Believe it or not, Microsoft actually provides some accelerated drivers for Linux virtual machines, but they're a hassle to get. You need to visit http://connect.microsoft.com, drill through the menus until you find the Virtual Machine Additions for Linux beta (why don't they just call them "drivers"?). This link might work: https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=154. The download process is almost hysterical. Instead of providing the drivers in a tarball, they are packaged in an iso file. But instead of allowing you to download the iso, you need to download a .msi installer that installs the iso to your Program Files directory. But you can't actually download the .msi file without using Internet Explorer, which in turn installs the Microsoft ActiveX Downloader program! After all of that hassle, you'll eventually discover that the Microsoft Linux drivers are only tested on certain versions of Fedora and OpenSUSE. I have yet to make them work.
Note that this hassle is not needed if you are using a variant of Windows instead of Linux.
Virtual PC 2007 actually has a lot of potential. I love that it is smaller and easier to use than VMWare. If they can fix the performance issues with Linux, I'll never use VMWare again. But of course, why would Microsoft fix Linux performance issues?
I own a few domain names, which means that I have the ability to create an unlimited number of email addresses. This is a cheap and effective way to reduce email spam in your inbox.
Whenever I purchase something from a web retailer that I've never used before, I create a custom email address that includes the name of the retailer. I do the same when I register for shareware and especially when I register at an online forum.
For example, if I plan to buy something from somewebstore.com, I create an email address call somewebstore@EXAMPLEofoneofmydomains.com, and I use that address exclusively for that web store. If start to receive spam to that address, I simply disable the address, and the spam stops.
Recently, I had to disable two addresses, one I used to register software called Shinkuro and one I used for a forum to discuss the KMPlayer media player software.
KMPlayer is an interesting media player for Windows, as it is mish-mash of features taken (stolen?) straight from other media players such as WinAmp, as well as various open source projects. I assumed that the Korean-based forums were insecure, and I was right. Within 3 weeks, I noticed that my custom kmp@EXAMPLEofoneofmydomains.com email address was being used as a Reply-To for someone sending spams. And I never even posted a message to the forum.
Shinkuro was surprising, as they are a company that creates collaboration software for government use, and is partially funded by DARPA . I created a custom shinkuro@EXAMPLEofoneofmydomains.com address to try the software, and never used it for another purpose. But this year, I started getting Nigerian 419 scams sent directly to that address. Would you trust the security of Shinkuro now?
If you watch the 2/8/07 video of Gamespot's "On The Spot" web show, you can see more live demos of the Wii (and PS3) game I'm working on. See if you can recognize the slouching demo guy…
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/features/onthespot/index.php
Two years ago [musicstorage4, musicstorage6, musicstorage1, musicstorage2, musicstorage-solved3, musicstorage3, musicstorage-solved1, musicstorage8, musicstorage-solved2, musicstorage5, musicstorage7], I set out to use a single Lossless Audio Compression format for all of my music. It turned out that there was no single format that was compatible with all of my playback devices.
Incredibly, this is still true today. Yes, there has been a lot of progress, and although there are many lossless formats available, three leading formats have emerged:
As you might expect, Apple iPods only play the ALAC format. Some, but not all, Microsoft "Plays for Sure" devices only play WMA Lossless. Many other hardware makers are now supporting FLAC, presumably because the format is an open, free standard, but FLAC files themselves are not fully supported by Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11. Sure, you can add FLAC support and parts of ALAC support to WMP11, but not all features are supported, such as metadata.
For the 70-80 million of use who use iPods with Windows computers and want to listen to true lossless CD quality music, this format nonsense is a complete pain.
This week, Steve Jobs wrote an essay about Digital Rights Management , and claimed that "all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in 'open' licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC." Yet he neglected to mention that the Apple Lossless format is proprietary, and that the iPod doesn't support any other lossless format.
Jobs said that if the record industry stopped requiring DRM, and instead allowed online music sellers to provide music in open and non-restricted formats, "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly". Well, Steve, why not prove your willingness to use "DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats" by supporting a non-proprietary lossless codec on the iPod and in iTunes?
Like, FLAC, for instance?
I never turn my WinXP machine off. Instead, I have it set to automatically go to "System Standby" mode after 1 hour of no activity. When I'm done using the machine, I just Log Off and let it go to Standby. When I return (the next day, for example), I just press Enter, wait a few seconds for the machine to "wake up," then Log In.
Recently, I noticed that the machine was becoming very sluggish and unresponsive for a few minutes after I logged in. Using Process Explorer, I saw that a service called "wuauclt.exe" was using 50% of the CPU, which in my Hyperthreaded machine is basically 100% of half the CPU (know what I mean?). The culprit service is part of the automatic Windows Update system. But since I've been using Windows Update for years, why the new slowdown?
After a few searches on the net, I found the probable reason. As it turns out, somehow over the past few weeks (months?) of automatic updates from Windows Update, a new update system called "Microsoft Update" was installed. Microsoft Update not only updates Windows, but also checks on various other Microsoft apps such as MS Office. Apparently, the damned thing does a full system scan for updates every time you log in. Brilliant user experience, no?
Fortunately, it appears to be easy to disable Microsoft Update and return to Windows Update. Just head to http://update.microsoft.com, click on the "Change settings" link, and check the "Disable Microsoft Update" checkbox.
Microsoft seems to acknowledge this problem, and promises a fix in the next service pack: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089
