[Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[John R. Hogerhuis]

Barely on-topic, but since VmWare interop crops up from time to time:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

I doubt this is targeted at QEMU, but rather at competing with Microsoft
and VirtualPC. That or they are leaving the low-end market for server
consolidation.

This may in fact be as much VmWare as most people would need. Countdown
has started for the first person to create a system image solely from
freeware "VmWare Player" ;-)

-- John.

Re: [Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[Mike Swanson]

Yeah, it barely on topic. But the .vmx files are extremely simple text
files, and qemu-img creates vmdk disk images. Yes, it's possible to
install operating systems solely withing VMware (this is the correct
spelling, btw) Player, but you cannot install VMware Tools, even with
the appropriate (windows|linux|freebsd|netware).iso file.

On 10/21/05, John R. Hogerhuis <jhoger@pobox.com> wrote:
> Barely on-topic, but since VmWare interop crops up from time to time:
>
> http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
>
> I doubt this is targeted at QEMU, but rather at competing with Microsoft
> and VirtualPC. That or they are leaving the low-end market for server
> consolidation.
>
> This may in fact be as much VmWare as most people would need. Countdown
> has started for the first person to create a system image solely from
> freeware "VmWare Player" ;-)
>
> -- John.
--
Mike

Re: [Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 13:22 -0700, Mike Swanson wrote:
> Yeah, it barely on topic. But the .vmx files are extremely simple text
> files, and qemu-img creates vmdk disk images.

That was my first thought when I saw this as well.

>  Yes, it's possible to
> install operating systems solely withing VMware (this is the correct
> spelling, btw) Player, but you cannot install VMware Tools, even with
> the appropriate (windows|linux|freebsd|netware).iso file.
> 

I figured as much. I understand some of what VMware tools has in it. Is
it necessary? QEMU is quite usable without special guest-side utilities.

Or perhaps the issue is that VMWare player will not run anything that
does not have VMware tools installed?

-- John.

[Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Stefano Marinelli]

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 12:29:45 -0700, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> Barely on-topic, but since VmWare interop crops up from time to time:
>
> http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

I don't like it. It's just a "player" and the images can't be written.
This means you can run an image but anything you write on it will be
deleted after you close it. I prefer the QEMU -snapshot :-)

Stefano

Re: [Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[Jim C. Brown]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 12:29:45PM -0700, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> I doubt this is targeted at QEMU,

I agree. It seems it can do 3 things that qemu currently can't: Use certain
types of host hardware (such as DVD or USB), copy & paste between host and
guest, and support drag & drop. None of these is a major issue (and copy and
paste over qemu machines which are networked is possible).

On the other hand, qemu supports using multiple snapshots, networking virtual
machines together, and its user-net/slirp network support is better than
the host only support that VMware Player has. (qemu also have a primitive
video capture ability via the monitor 'snapshot' command, which captures
video stills of the guest into png files.)

> but rather at competing with Microsoft
> and VirtualPC. That or they are leaving the low-end market for server
> consolidation.

Personally, I'd say that the latter is more likely. VMware gets most of the
big bucks from businesses which want to run hundreds of virtual machines.

> 
> This may in fact be as much VMware as most people would need. Countdown
> has started for the first person to create a system image solely from
> freeware "VMware Player" ;-)

Based on the comparison sheet they give, I doubt it is possible. VMware Player
isn't able to create virtual machines. Of course, if you can save changes to
the virtual disk and boot from something other than the hard disk, it might
be possible to use qemu-img to get around this.

-- 
Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty.
Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 12:48 +0200, Stefano Marinelli wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 12:29:45 -0700, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> > Barely on-topic, but since VmWare interop crops up from time to time:
> >
> > http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
> 
> I don't like it. It's just a "player" and the images can't be written.

use qemu-img to create the disk image.

> This means you can run an image but anything you write on it will be
> deleted after you close it. I prefer the QEMU -snapshot :-)
> 

Yes, that would be mostly useless. But I didn't get the impression that
everything you write will disappear when you close VMware Player.

Their comparison chart says they don't support snapshots, but that's a
different issue.

I would try it out but I understand that Player would overwrite my
VMware installation.

-- John.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:

> On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 12:48 +0200, Stefano Marinelli wrote:
>
> > I don't like it. It's just a "player" and the images can't be written.
> 
> use qemu-img to create the disk image.

That is just creation. I think Stefano meant that you cannot use the guest 
OS to write to that image.

Hth,
Dscho

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 23:58 +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> > use qemu-img to create the disk image.
> 
> That is just creation. I think Stefano meant that you cannot use the guest 
> OS to write to that image.

I understood. I just don't believe it; I didn't get the impression
Stefano was saying that he had actually tried it. AFAIK, VMware Player
writes changes to the hard disk image.

-- John.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Henning Sprang]

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On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 23:58 +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 12:48 +0200, Stefano Marinelli wrote:
> >
> > > I don't like it. It's just a "player" and the images can't be written.
> > 
> > use qemu-img to create the disk image.
> 
> That is just creation. I think Stefano meant that you cannot use the guest 
> OS to write to that image.

But that's not correct. I tried it and could write data on the disk,
shut down the vm, start it again, have the data still there.

I found it a bit ugly that after shutting down the player, my usb disk
was unmounted on the host system - not exactly an effect I want.

I am not sure if it's technically possible and then legal to create
images for running in vmware player with qemu. It would be great,
though, because we can expect lots of people using it, it's perfect for
all kinds of demos, for example those that get distributed on live cd's
until now.

Henning

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Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[John Wells]

John R. Hogerhuis said:
> I understood. I just don't believe it; I didn't get the impression
Stefano was saying that he had actually tried it. AFAIK, VMware Player
writes changes to the hard disk image.

I was able to successfully take my qemu installation of Windows XP,
convert it with qemu-img to a vmdk file, and then boot it up in VMWare
player (and yes, I own the full version of VMWare as well on another
machine, so I'm not worried about the legality if there are any concerns).

I was also able to create a vmdk image from scratch using qemu-img and
install OpenBSD in it.

As I've only owned the full version for about two weeks, I haven't
researched what VMWare tools adds to the picture, but I know resolution
hasn't been a problem with VMWare Player, at least on the XP image.

Performance does seem a bit better than qemu, but I done anything to
quantify this. I'm running on the latest version of Ubuntu.

John

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Mike Swanson]

On 11/9/05, John Wells <lists@sourceillustrated.com> wrote:
> I was able to successfully take my qemu installation of Windows XP,
> convert it with qemu-img to a vmdk file, and then boot it up in VMWare
> player (and yes, I own the full version of VMWare as well on another
> machine, so I'm not worried about the legality if there are any concerns).

VMware Workstation 5.5 Beta also carries the VMware Player, yes even
before the Player became official. ;)
--
Mike

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Christian MICHON]

Regarding performances of vmware player vs kqemu/qemu (I'm not
being critical about the figures here, just stating what I measured)...

using a slax-live cdrom, I managed to compile linux-2.6.14 in less
than 3 minutes, when it takes more than 6 minutes with
kqemu/qemu-0.7.2, and around 20 minutes without kqemu.
The test was made using vmdk image format.

But vmware player setup file is over 25Mb compressed, when
kqemu/qemu is less than 2Mb uncompressed :)

Christian

On 11/10/05, John Wells wrote:
> Performance does seem a bit better than qemu, but I done anything to
> quantify this. I'm running on the latest version of Ubuntu.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Nis Jorgensen]

Christian MICHON wrote:

>using a slax-live cdrom, I managed to compile linux-2.6.14 in less
>than 3 minutes, when it takes more than 6 minutes with
>kqemu/qemu-0.7.2, and around 20 minutes without kqemu.
>The test was made using vmdk image format.
>
Please note that the VMware license terms forbid you to publish
benchmarks without prior written concern. I suspect that you may be in
violation (depending on the interpretation of "benchmark", and whether
you have such prior agreement). One of the reasons I decided not to
investigate VMware further.

/Nis

[Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[Christian Bourque]

> I was able to successfully take my qemu installation of Windows XP,
> convert it with qemu-img to a vmdk file, and then boot it up in VMWare
> player (and yes, I own the full version of VMWare as well on another
> machine, so I'm not worried about the legality if there are any concerns).

Hummm even if you convert your current QEMU image to a vmdk file you
still need a vmx config file to start-up a VM in VMWare player no?

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMWare player

[John Wells]

Christian Bourque said:
> Hummm even if you convert your current QEMU image to a vmdk file you
> still need a vmx config file to start-up a VM in VMWare player no?

Yes, but it's a fairly simple text file and there are links on the net to
show you how to create your own.

[Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Ben Pfaff]

Julian Seward <jseward@acm.org> writes:

> On Thursday 15 June 2006 14:18, WaxDragon wrote:
>> On 6/15/06, kadil <ksadil@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>> > On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 18:10 +0200, Oliver Gerlich wrote:
>> > Real world, gui's are just so easy & desirable, especially if the gui is
>> > consistent across os's, and part of the original distro.  I think
>> > take-up would be huge (well huge-er, current takeup is huge)
>>
>> Some of us appriciate the fact that qemu has no "GUI" per se.  ;0)
>
> Sure.  But to 'sell' the project to wider audience, which may be
> helpful for its longer term development, a GUI is necessary.

For what it's worth, VMware Player doesn't have much of a GUI.
It has about five menu items, a couple of buttons, and maybe one
dialog box.
-- 
"While the Melissa license is a bit unclear, Melissa aggressively
 encourages free distribution of its source code."
--Kevin Dalley <kevin@seti.org>

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Joe Lee]

Good point on that, BUT it's not just about the GUI. It's about an 
"easy" way to install the product and run a given app without the need 
to create/setup a VM - To me that is the benefit of the VMware player. 
However, not much of a big benefit IF QEMU is made easy to install and 
has a nice GUI along with it - IMO.

Joe

Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Julian Seward <jseward@acm.org> writes:
>
>   
>> On Thursday 15 June 2006 14:18, WaxDragon wrote:
>>     
>>> On 6/15/06, kadil <ksadil@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 18:10 +0200, Oliver Gerlich wrote:
>>>> Real world, gui's are just so easy & desirable, especially if the gui is
>>>> consistent across os's, and part of the original distro.  I think
>>>> take-up would be huge (well huge-er, current takeup is huge)
>>>>         
>>> Some of us appriciate the fact that qemu has no "GUI" per se.  ;0)
>>>       
>> Sure.  But to 'sell' the project to wider audience, which may be
>> helpful for its longer term development, a GUI is necessary.
>>     
>
> For what it's worth, VMware Player doesn't have much of a GUI.
> It has about five menu items, a couple of buttons, and maybe one
> dialog box.
>   

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[WaxDragon]

On 6/15/06, Joe Lee <joelee724@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good point on that, BUT it's not just about the GUI. It's about an
> "easy" way to install the product and run a given app without the need
> to create/setup a VM - To me that is the benefit of the VMware player.
> However, not much of a big benefit IF QEMU is made easy to install and
> has a nice GUI along with it - IMO.
>
> Joe
>

I've seen several projects ship preinstalled images with prebuilt qemu
binaries, and a script to start it.  It doesn't get much easier than
that.

WD
-- 
<GedMurphy> why does the size matter?

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Joe Lee]

WaxDragon wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Joe Lee <joelee724@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Good point on that, BUT it's not just about the GUI. It's about an
>> "easy" way to install the product and run a given app without the need
>> to create/setup a VM - To me that is the benefit of the VMware player.
>> However, not much of a big benefit IF QEMU is made easy to install and
>> has a nice GUI along with it - IMO.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>
> I've seen several projects ship preinstalled images with prebuilt qemu
> binaries, and a script to start it.  It doesn't get much easier than
> that.
>
> WD

Can you point me to the one you know about?

Joe

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Jan Marten Simons]

Am Donnerstag, 15. Juni 2006 21:44 schrieb Joe Lee:
> Can you point me to the one you know about?
>
> Joe

As I already did in one of my last replies, I point you to
http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/download.html
and especially to this file:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/reactos/reactos0.2.9-REL-qemu.zip?download

After Downloading and unpacking that zip-file you will find a .bat-file for 
windows and a .sh for linux to simply start the supplied image. No need to 
setup anything on the computer in question and another pro of using qemu for 
this is that you will not need to have admin/root priviledges (in contrast to 
VMware Player iirc).

Jan

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Jan Marten Simons]

Am Donnerstag, 15. Juni 2006 21:21 schrieb Joe Lee:
>Good point on that, BUT it's not just about the GUI. It's about an
> "easy" way to install the product and run a given app without the need
> to create/setup a VM - To me that is the benefit of the VMware player.
...
>
> Joe

Well, qemu does not even need to be installed, it can run from any location, 
if it is distributed in an intelligent manner. The steps required to setup a 
new VM are ridiculus easy as qemu ships a handy tool for creating and 
converting different disk images and a quite good documentation as well.

Regards,
Jan

[Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Christian Bourque]

>Face it, putting a GUI on something like QEMU is going to require at
>least a one per desktop/platform effort.  And that can best be kept with
>the GNOME/KDE/etc software repositories because they require constant
>updating on the schedule of the rest of the desktop environment to stay
>current.

In the development version of my Java frontend for QEMU (JQEMU) I've
already integrated the Java VNC client from TightVNC and it works like
a charm without any speed overhead! And it feels just like VMWare...

Since Java is already available for a large variety of platforms this
wouldn't require a big porting effort...

Christian

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Tim Walker]

Christian Bourque wrote:
>> Face it, putting a GUI on something like QEMU is going to require at
>> least a one per desktop/platform effort.  And that can best be kept with
>> the GNOME/KDE/etc software repositories because they require constant
>> updating on the schedule of the rest of the desktop environment to stay
>> current.
>
> In the development version of my Java frontend for QEMU (JQEMU) I've
> already integrated the Java VNC client from TightVNC and it works like
> a charm without any speed overhead! And it feels just like VMWare...
>
> Since Java is already available for a large variety of platforms this
> wouldn't require a big porting effort...
>
> Christian
This gets my vote. Have you tried a compile to native with gcj for those 
who don't have/want to have the Java VM installed?

[Qemu-devel] Re: VMware Player

[Christian Bourque]

> > In the development version of my Java frontend for QEMU (JQEMU) I've
> > already integrated the Java VNC client from TightVNC and it works like
> > a charm without any speed overhead! And it feels just like VMWare...
> >
> > Since Java is already available for a large variety of platforms this
> > wouldn't require a big porting effort...
> >
> > Christian
> This gets my vote. Have you tried a compile to native with gcj for those
> who don't have/want to have the Java VM installed?
>

Hi Tim!

The last time I tried to compile JQEMU with gcj I had some errors
because the Swing API wasn't fully supported by gcj. But that was a
long time ago and I read that the gcj team have made significant
progress since then so I'll give it another shot this weekend!

Christian