Why run VMs? part 1

I'm a Unix guy, but often work in a windows environ. Usually there's something that only runs in windows that I need to run.

I've used DOSemu, Executor (Mac OS 7), Win4Lin, VMware Workstation (2.x -> 6.x), Bochs, QEMU, Basillisk and wine. All have various capabilities and impacts.

If you just want to run windows apps, having a 2nd computer running terminal server over a gigabit net is probably the best for features. You get full hardware access, reasonable display speed (gigabit switches and KVMs are inexpensive).

For a Macintosh, VNC over an SSH connection works well on Mac OSX. I've used VNC to control System 7 systems. I find VNC on a mac works better then on windows. Windows doesn't let VNC at the login screen while OSX does.

VMware and Win4Lin depended on the kernel so any update to that meant a reconfigure. *sigh* And hopefully that kernel was supported. Otherwise you had a choice to make. I get tired of all the reconfiguring. Of course Windows doesn't update its kernel often so the host is more stable.

I have hopes for QEMU lately. And KVM now that I have a chip with virtualization. I've gotten QEMU running with Solaris as a host, but the networking was a bit tricky. I'd love to see VMware hosted on Solaris but I doubt the port will be done. Hardware is inexpensive enough that having a Linux box is doable.