This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Message: 6 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 06:31:15 -0700 To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] Netscape doesn't work Message-ID: <20000925063114.C11933@linuxmafia.com> References: <000401c024c0$4a5e51f0$227513d1@JDELAGARZA> <p04330107b5f15ae76b03@[206.132.89.194]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.5i In-Reply-To: <p04330107b5f15ae76b03@[206.132.89.194]>; from dredd@megacity.org on Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 11:55:22AM -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> === Subject: RE: Rescuing a VNC session From: Jamin Collins <JaminC@adapt-tele.com> Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:30:49 -0500 wilson@claborn.net [mailto:wilson@claborn.net] wrote: > Sometimes I'll leave my VNC viewer open on Windows, > connected to the Linux VNC server, and when I come back it > will have closed for some reason. But if I telnet to the > linux box, all the apps that I left open are still open, > and running, and even the VNC server is still running. But > if I try to reconnect the client, even with the "request > shared session" option, it will authenticate and start to > open up the viewer window, then suddenly close. And > there's nothing I can see to do about it. Has anyone else > had this trouble, and is there any other way to reconnect > to that xsession in order to, for instance, save my work? Might want to try posting this on the VNC List vnc-list@uk.research.att.com. You'll probably have better luck. ==== Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 15:09:08 -0700 To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> begin Brian W. quotation: > It just looked like u had a bitch of a time trying to get guest oses > to run. Those sorts of emulation environments are handy for laptop users with high-end CPUs and RAM to burn. For other situations, I fail to see the point. Put a $20 Tulip card in your overpowered Win32 box and install VNC Server (http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/winvnc.html). Assign it IP address 192.168.0.2. Put a line in C:\WINDOWS\HOSTS, associating that address with hostname "windows" and a second one associating 192.168.0.1 with hostname "linux". Start VNC Server. Remove the overpowered Win32 box's monitor. (It can now run "headless".) Plug the monitor into the used P133 you got at New and Used Computers in Daly City for $150. Insert your second $20 Tulip card. Connect the two machines using a $10 crossover ethernet cable. Install the Linux distribution of your choice, assigning IP address 192.168.0.1 and hostname "linux". Put that line plus the one for 192.168.0.2 and hostname "windows" to /etc/hosts. Start up X. Launch VNC Viewer for Linux. You now have the ability from your X/Linux desktop to remotely run any legacy Win32 applications while you're weaning yourself away to better things. I don't understand why anyone would saddle a perfectly decent Linux box with VMware or the like when VNC is free software. Some people seem allegic to networks and/or believe they're somehow entitled to only one computer at a time. They need to get over that. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 15:47:35 -0700 From: Marc MERLIN <marc_news@valinux.com> To: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> Cc: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:09:08PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote: > I don't understand why anyone would saddle a perfectly decent Linux box > with VMware or the like when VNC is free software. Some people seem Space taken up/Heat generated/Power consumed by a second machine. Since you worked at $PRIOR_FIRM, you also know how useful vmware is to check alternate linux distributions, fix some init scripts, whatever, without ever rebooting a physical box. The undoable disk feature is also very useful, especially in the windblows world. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 17:31:16 -0700 From: Walter Reed <walt@hubinternet.com> To: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> Cc: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:09:08PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote: <big snip> > I don't understand why anyone would saddle a perfectly decent Linux box > with VMware or the like when VNC is free software. Some people seem > allegic to networks and/or believe they're somehow entitled to only one > computer at a time. They need to get over that. I found that some applications don't work well with VNC - things like photoshop and Visio. VNC is totally awesome for other not-so-mouse-oriented software. I found win4lin a simpler way to get a simple windows environment than vmware, and it's a whole lot cheaper - but it has many more restrictions: win 95 or 98 only (no NT or other OSs) networking via winsock emulation (no servers or Micro$oft specific networking ie. exchange talking to exchange server native mode). I guess it depends on what your needs are. For those times when you Need Word (when Amipro or wordperfect cant handle a document) or Visio, or any other simple software, win4lin works fine. If you need full emulation, VNC or VMware may be better. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 16:10:18 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday begin Walter Reed quotation: > I found that some applications don't work well with VNC [...] > I found win4lin a simpler way to get a simple windows environment... Noted. One advantage to a dedicated, headless Win32 box imaged remotely is that it avoids junking up perfectly good Linux boxes with CPU/RAM-hogging emulation and Win32 software. VMware does such indelicate things to the Linux kernel that the linux-kernel list doesn't want to hear your bug reports and patches if you run it. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 16:16:47 -0700 From: Don Marti <dmarti@zgp.org> To: Walter Reed <walt@hubinternet.com> Cc: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>, svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday begin Walter Reed quotation of Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 05:31:16PM -0700: > I guess it depends on what your needs are. For those times when you Need Word > (when Amipro or wordperfect cant handle a document) or Visio, or any other > simple software, win4lin works fine. If you need full emulation, VNC or > VMware may be better. There's also the option of installing an X server on your computer running a proprietary OS, and running the Linux box entirely or mostly headless, with X applications showing up on the proprietary desktop. If your big hog GUI apps are still on the legacy Windows platform, and all you're running on Linux is your shell, editor, mailer and programming tools, then that would give you better performance than the other way around. === Date: Mon Oct 2 23:16:02 2000 From: David Madison <svlug.org@daveola.com> Subject: RE: [OFF LIST] Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday 2) Speaking of... Rick's post "high-end CPUs and RAM to burn" seemed to imply that VMWare was a hog. I was under the impression that VMWare only emulated the I/O side of things, and the rest of the app code ran pretty close to native, with a few exceptions, essentially stubbing off the I/O so it can run through the 'true' OS. If that's the case, is it really a performance hog? === Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 16:43:16 -0700 From: "Jeffrey B. Siegal" <jbs@quiotix.com> To: David Madison <svlug.org@daveola.com> Subject: Re: [OFF LIST] Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on David Madison wrote: > 2) Speaking of... Rick's post "high-end CPUs and RAM to burn" seemed > to imply that VMWare was a hog. I was under the impression that > VMWare only emulated the I/O side of things, and the rest of the > app code ran pretty close to native, with a few exceptions, essentially > stubbing off the I/O so it can run through the 'true' OS. If that's > the case, is it really a performance hog? The performance is "OK." As you say, cpu-intensive apps which primarily run in user mode run at or close to native speed. Apps which make a lot of system calls run much slower. Apps which do a lot of physical I/O use much more CPU time than normal. Heavy network usage requires a lot of CPU time. Heavy video operations use a lot of CPU time and run more slowly than normal, even with VMWARE's special optimized drivers (they aren't that optimized). 3D is not optimized at all, so Windows games don't work well. Running VMWARE uses a lot of physical memory, because each session runs has its own kernel, buffers, etc., and very little of VMWARE sessions seem to ever get paged out, even if the pages are not strictly locked into RAM. (I'm not sure if they are or not.) === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 17:01:33 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday begin Don Marti quotation: > There's also the option of installing an X server on your computer > running a proprietary OS, and running the Linux box entirely or mostly > headless, with X applications showing up on the proprietary desktop. Bad idea, if you're trying to migrate _off_ the strait-jacketed, boring, proprietary desktop, and trying to get used to a good Linux/X desktop for long-term comfort. Remotely imaging the proprietary platform's apps onto Linux lets you do that migration while preserving access to the one or two old applications you need for the duration. Any of these setups is a compromise: The problems Walter has making one or two mouse-heavy Win32 applications (Photoshop, Visio) run properly using VNC may just mean his best solution is reconnecting the monitor when using those applications only. The point is that what he gains includes avoiding bogging down Linux, keeping it as one's central computing resource, and learning to leverage the network. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 17:08:29 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday begin Marc MERLIN quotation: > Space taken up/Heat generated/Power consumed by a second machine. True, but drastically less than commonly assumed by those who aren't used to headless network hosts. > Since you worked at $PRIOR_FIRM, you also know how useful vmware is to > check alternate linux distributions.... LinuxOne's, if memory serves. But that was mainly so I could try the thing out without sacrificing an existing machine build. Similarly: > The undoable disk feature is also very useful, especially in the > windblows world. I was just recalling tha feature. It makes possible some really cool things. Add to the revert-to-image feature the optional checkpointing of new system configuration. But what I was thinking of is the interminable parade of MS-Windows users coming to Linux InstallFests wanting help with dual-booting their Win32 boxes, so they can "try Linux". I used to wonder why they asked that so frequently, and never the more obvious networked approach. Eventually, I figured it out: (1) They're network-phobic. (2) They've never run an OS that can have long-lived processes, so they fail to understand why dual-booting shoots them in the foot, in this area. (3) The hardware required to run the OSes they're familiar with is so ridiculously expensive that they'd never think to get a second computer, even if spoon-fed the necessary network details. So, as is often the case, the newbie asks us if we can help him do foo, without bothering to ask if foo is even desirable, let alone optimal. What I'm suggesting is a little user education and guidance, rather than sitting idly by as users ignore the more interesting and productive Linux solutions out of ignorance. === Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 17:30:01 -0700 To: svlug@svlug.org From: Roger Lynker <rlynker@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday Rick, Where I work, we're looking to use VMWare to allow booting of multiple versions of NT with different versions of our software (as well as different Service Pack levels). It is much faster and more convenient for us than reinstalling a version of software to help a customer with a problem (that's if we can find the damn install CD). For that purpose, VMWare is excellent. Going further on that concept, I must openly say that VMWare's technical support and customer relations are very much lacking. We have a potential to order over 50 licenses at $300 each and we have to call them constantly to try to get their attention, and even with that there is little result. We found a bug with an application we were trying to use and sent them all the data we had including a version of our software. After much prodding and voice mails, they finally found a "work around" for us. Gee, thanks. I thought they were small enough that a $15,000 order was worth fighting for. We're really looking forward to using this product and I'm actually writing this email in a win95 session on my P3-650 laptop (with 256MB RAM). Very fast, very good......But Rick has a valid point. At home I have a KVM switch and 3 computers. Much easier that way....plus then I can play 3D games. I doubt you'll see that in VMWare ever. We also use VNC here extensively to access NT controllers (isn't that an oxymoron?). Wonderful application. === Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 17:52:28 -0700 From: "Jeffrey B. Siegal" <jbs@quiotix.com> To: Roger Lynker <rlynker@mindspring.com>, svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday Oh, by the way, since we're spending all this time talking about a proprietary application (albeit a useful one) on a linux list, people should take a look at <http://www.plex86.org/>. Coming along very nicely. === Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 18:03:49 -0700 To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] so re we getting free vmware licenses on wednesday From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> begin Roger Lynker quotation: > Where I work, we're looking to use VMWare to allow booting of multiple > versions of NT.... ObTease: Ah, well, there's your problem. If anything, you should run multiple Linux sessions, instead. > At home I have a KVM switch and 3 computers. Good point: KVM switches are good, too. I suspect they run a bit expensive, but they make possible managing multiple machines from a single large monitor even _with_ graphics-intensive applications (Photoshop, Visio, 3D games) that might not image well over network mechanisms. What you miss, though, is the cool aspect of running multiple machines from inside a single _workspace_, which VNC (or X) lets you do. But, as I was saying, you have to select from various compromises. ===