Re: [Qemu-devel] Merging improvements from VirtualBox OSE into qemu?

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

> 1) complex setup is no longer required for "bridged" networking:
>
>    This works without root privileges somehow, probably by taking
>    advantage of new infrastructure in the VirtualBox device driver.

You need root privileges to load the random kernel modules required to d this. 
Not going to happen for qemu.

> 2) improved support for running 64bit guests on 32bit hosts
>
>    On my Intel Core 2.4 rig I booted the Debian Lenny live CD in 48
>    seconds.
>
>    By contrast, I booted the same CD under qemu-system-x86_64 in
>    257 seconds, or 5 times slower...

You're comparing apples to oranges. Virtualbox uses virtualization, qemu use 
emulation. I suspect if you boot a 64-bit OS you'll find things significantly 
slower.

If you're running a 32-bit operating system on a 64-bit machine I'm completely 
uninterested. Run a proper operating system that actually supports your 
hardware.

If you want 32-bit on 64-bit virtualization you need to talk to the KVM 
people. I doubt you'll find much interest though. Any hardware that supports 
KVM is already 64-bit, and you're almost entirely targetting obsolete 
hardware.

On a related note, VirtualBox has the same problem as kqemu: Out of tree 
kernel modules are just plain wrong. A large proportion of the linux 
community (me included) isn't going to take it seriously until it's [aiming 
to be] merged into mainstream kernels. To do that you probably need to make 
it use the KVM interface.

> These are dramatic improvements in usability and I'm curious whether it
> is likely that these changes will find there way to qemu? I know that
> both projects are under the same opensource license

Not quite true. IIRC VirtualBox is released under a proprietary licence, with 
some parts dual licenced as GPL. QEMU is a mixture of GPL, LGPL and BSD. This 
discrepancy tends to disourage cooperation.

Paul