PC Construction

A few years ago I setup a virtual machine to run WinXP under CentOS. This was using the standard libvirt package which comes with CentOS.

I couldn't be bothered with reinstalling WinXP and the applications from scratch so I just cloned its disk (which was pretty full) into an empty lvm volume and then imported it into libvirt. This worked fine except that WinXP detected many hardware changes so I had to get its security key revalidated. Later I resized its disk and loaded some new WinXP drivers to improve the performance.

I am not sure if Windows 7 will allow you to do the same but it may be worth a try.
 
Can anyone shed any light on this?:
The Robolinux 7 series Gnome, KDE, Xfce & LXDE Operating Systems are built on the previous Debian Stable platform Wheezy, therefore any new PC or Laptop manufactured after October 2013 is not compatible.

Robolinux 8 series "Cinnamon Raptor" is built on the current Debian Stable platform Jessie, therefore any new PC or Laptop manufactured after January 2015 is not compatible.
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Is this to do with EFI/UEFI?
 
prpr said:
All the software I use works fine (I'm using Virtualbox on Mint with an i5) and have had about 15 VMs running simultaneously (could do with a bit more RAM!) whilst doing stuff (using GNS3 and such like).
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fenlander said:
I run W10 in Virtualbox under Mint. The W10 licence is the one the machine inherited when it upgraded from its original W7 and it hasn't complained (so far) about its validity. The W10 install is there purely to run Photoshop: in every other respect dropping Windows in favour of Linux was the best thing I've done in ages.
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MartinLiddle said:
I use virtualisation a fair bit using VirtualBox and it works well for me. I have a Win 10 virtual machine on top of a Win 10 host to cope with a Microsoft oddity; a Win XP machine to run one very ancient piece of software and a couple of Linux virtual machines. All works well for me but it will depend on the software you are trying to run.
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This is all good news, and maybe I don't need to bother with the Robolinux hand-holding. I would still like to know what this compatibility business is all about though, presumably it also applies to other flavours of Linux.

xyz321 said:
A few years ago I setup a virtual machine to run WinXP under CentOS. This was using the standard libvirt package which comes with CentOS.

I couldn't be bothered with reinstalling WinXP and the applications from scratch so I just cloned its disk (which was pretty full) into an empty lvm volume and then imported it into libvirt.
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My intention is to migrate to native Linux applications, but I constantly need to "get stuff done" so I need a smooth transition with a known fallback* (ie what I did before the switch). The idea of simply copying my existing installation is appealing (although I imagine I would need to uninstall RollbackRX). That's one of the features specifically tailored into the Robolinux package (at a cost).

For anything I definitely need Windows for, I could set up a fresh Win7 VM optimised for that specific use, post migration. I don't see myself moving away from CorelDRAW for example, and a potential future project will require installation of a variety of versions of MS Office.

There is also the question of hardware support. I need to check whether my printers etc are supported in Linux, and if not I guess they won't work in a Windows VM hosted in Linux either, and dual-booting is required.

However, this is all getting a little ahead of itself. The primary driver is to get a Win VM (any Win VM) up and running on existing hardware (not new hardware yet) before the MS deadline. Then, presumably, the VM can be copied to a new host with no issues whatsoever.

* The ultimate fallback is to turn on the old PC! That could work if all my files are shared on a NAS rather than stored on the PC.
 
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Black Hole said:
There is also the question of hardware support. I need to check whether my printers etc are supported in Linux, and if not I guess they won't work in a Windows VM hosted in Linux either, and dual-booting is required.
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I don't have any experience of PoboLinux but typically with the VMs you can choose whether a particular device is to be controlled by the host OS or the guest.

If a printer is a network printer, then it can be controllled by both the host and guest. If it is directly connected by USB, you could choose to use the device in pass through mode but it would not then be accessible to the host OS. It may be possible to switch back and forth depending on the software tools provided.

If you have any additional cards on the PCI bus, it may be possible to make them available to the guest without any Linux drivers loaded.
 
xyz321 said:
If a printer is a network printer, then it can be controllled by both the host and guest.
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My main printer is network, and I can see that a Win VM could access it directly (with access to the network). Access from a Linux might be more of a problem, but it looks like there might be a Linux driver for it (although it appears to be a universal driver rather than a model-specific one).

What's WINE like for hosting Windows progs?
 
Black Hole said:
My main printer is network, and I can see that a Win VM could access it directly (with access to the network). Access from a Linux might be more of a problem, but it looks like there might be a Linux driver for it (although it appears to be a universal driver rather than a model-specific one).
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I access a network printer from VMs running Windows and Linux without any issues. Tell us the make and model of printer for a more detailed response.
What's WINE like for hosting Windows progs?
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Like VMs it works very well for programs that don't need to access hardware directly. There is a database of programs with a rating of how well they run under WINE at https://appdb.winehq.org/
I lost interest in WINE when VMs could do what I wanted with less hassle.
 
MartinLiddle said:
Tell us the make and model of printer for a more detailed response.
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I can google as well as anybody, and it's immaterial at the moment anyway, but for what it's worth:

Epson ET-4550 (WiFi)
Brother MFC-7320 (USB via WiFi to USB network adapter*)
Epson S22 (USB via WiFi to USB network adapter*)
Bluetooth mouse (USB Bluetooth adapter dongle)

- so the only physical connection I have to my notebook is the charger!

Yes, all these printers serve different purposes (although I use the Brother a lot less now I have the ET-4550, especially now its cartridge is running out... again).

* Medion MD86907 W-LAN USB Remote Hub - I can't imagine that's gonna work in Linux, although it might in a Win VM (it has a Windows management tool, and communicates with the PC by WiFi).
 
For CAD/3D, Video processing and any other multithreaded workload, the AMD Ryzen series would appear to offer a considerable price/performance advantage over Intel with the added bonus of coming unlocked as standard should you wish to tweak the performance with a subtle overclock. The only exception where Intel currently has the edge is gaming where (afaik) many titles currently employ coding and compilation optimisations for such.

As for running Windows under Linux, I would certainly try Wine first for your "irreplaceable" Windows programs as it offers closer to native performance than abstracting the whole platform into a VM. Both MS office and CorelDRAW have pretty good compatability. In fact most of the popular Windows programs can run without issue. It only starts to get iffy when you turn to games especially the more recent AAA titles. But since you're not a gamer, this probably won't bother you. You can also look into using a Wine wrapper such as Winetricks or Play on Linux to simplify matters and ease the installation process.

You might be pleasantly surprised by Linux printer support, it really isn't too bad actually. Whilst Brother and HP are generally regarded as having the best Linux support, I recently bought a Samsung MFC which was a doddle to setup. Where there is no native support from manufacturers, CUPS can often sort it out.

Anyway, I hope you have fun finding out. If you take the belt-and-braces approach and install a Win VM as a fallback, you really can't go wrong can you?
 
Progress: I bought a magazine with a bootable Linux Mint 18.2 (plus other distros) cover DVD, and now have a multi-boot notebook (I installed Mint to a 150GB USB drive, and can boot to it instead of Windows by just plugging it in and rebooting). It's using my Bluetooth mouse (once I remembered it needed to be paired), and I'm posting this in Firefox (I dislike the fonts it uses compared with Win7-Chrome or iOS-Safari).

Next step is to install VirtualBox and then try installing Win7 into it.

Colsta said:
Anyway, I hope you have fun finding out.
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TBH, I don't want to do this for fun - I just need it to work without taking up much time to get it working. The obvective is future-proofing: isolate my productivity into virtual machines so that I can run them on any hardware that happens to come along regardless of failure and replacement, or OS and software updates (in the outside world).
 
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Uh? Next step is to install virtualbox in the w7 vm running in linux and run a linux vm in it? After a while you won't have a clue what you are running.
 
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Hit a brick wall. VirtualBox is only offering me 32-bit environments... but I have 64-bit Windows available to install (and wish to use long term).

The reason I am only being offered 32-bit environments, despite having a 64-bit processor, may be that the Celeron doesn't have hardware virtualisation support so VirtualBox has to run emulation.

To recap: the idea was to set up virtual machine installations of Windows 7 before Microsoft pull the plug, and prior to me acquiring new hardware to run them on, by using my existing hardware and then copying the VMs to the new hardware later (where the virtualised OS shouldn't know it's on different hardware and therefore won't complain). It looks like I will have to hurry up with my new machine after all, or at least get access to a machine with a suitable processor for the 64-bit VM.
 
Black Hole said:
Hit a brick wall. VirtualBox is only offering me 32-bit environments... but I have 64-bit Windows available to install (and wish to use long term).

The reason I am only being offered 32-bit environments, despite having a 64-bit processor, may be that the Celeron doesn't have hardware virtualisation support so VirtualBox has to run emulation.
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Code: 
cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep vmx
Funnily enough, I fell over this problem last week on my work dev. machine. I could've sworn I enabled VT-X, but on checking the BIOS settings found that I hadn't. I'd only needed 32 bit VMs until that point.

Edit: "lscpu" might easier to read.
Edit2: Useful info. here:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/103965/how-to-determine-if-cpu-vt-extensions-are-enabled-in-bios
 
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I don't recall there being anything like that in my BIOS - I'll check, but I'm pretty sure the Celeron doesn't have those features (one of my wish-list tick boxes for the new machine). My next plan is to get a mate to configure the VMs for me to import at a later date.

Update: no Celerons launched before 2015 have hardware virtualisation support.
 
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New plan: start collecting the bare bones of my new PC system (I'll have to stick a pin in the options list sooner or later), just enough to get a motherboard with integrated graphics up an running on the bench, and build a VM on that.

What bothers me about this is the risk I might overlook something when choosing the mobo/proc combo, and having done that stage it might then sit there for a long time while technology moves on. On the other hand, technology is always moving on and one has to leap in at some point (or never leap in at all). It could be postulated that performance has levelled out and until there is some major shift in technology, any improvements between generations are only incremental (optical or quantum processors, anyone?).

The big gain of this plan is that if my notebook suddenly gives out, I will already have started a system to transfer to and my down time will be less than if I had not started at all (at which point I would be pressed to buy a ready-made system of some kind, probably a notebook again).
 
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