Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] new SDL keyboard shortcuts to start and stop VM

[Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>]

On 10/26/09 17:08, Avi Kivity wrote:
>> A user starts a VM at a physical box. Everythings fine but he wants to
>> return to his workstation so he closes the window. He goes back to his
>> workstation and connects to a VNC server (on a different X server). He
>> wants to now bring up the guest's display.
>
> Users don't have boxes. They have computers. They don't want to open VNC
> clients and type in meaningless numerical addresses.

A qemu gui can easily hide that it actually uses vnc.  The only thing 
needed is a connection to the monitor (you'll need that anyway to have 
your fancy buttons do anything useful).  The GUI can do 'info vnc' to 
figure how to connect to the vnc server then.

> They do want GUIs
> which fit with the OSes theme, cut'n'paste, printing, and shared
> storage, all easily configurable.

You mean something like virt-manager?

BTW: you can quit and restart virt-manager while your VMs keep running.

>> This cannot be achieved with a gui in the same process as qemu. Is it
>> necessary to support? I don't know.
>
> In the priority list this is about 3000 places below having nice buttons
> to eject and insert a CDROM. A user with a "box" would probably want to
> run the guest on a server (and use vnc, etc.).

Focusing on the users needs *only* doesn't fly.  You want have users and 
hackers use the same thing, otherwise you'll have a hard time finding 
developers for the GUI.  Which in turn means placing the GUI into a 
separate process (which may even run on another machine) is a must-have.

cheers,
   Gerd