linuxmint-podcast-project team mailing list archive

["Clement Lefebvre" <clement.lefebvre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Charles, 

I use VMs a lot: 

- For Mint 6 you only saw 2 ISOs: RC1 and stable. Under the hood these
were LinuxMint-6-DEV-011.iso and LinuxMint-6-DEV-012.iso. Basically the
latest ISO was the 12th one I built before the release was considered
stable. This is unusually low, and the number of ISOs can be much
greater (057 for Linux Mint 5 for instance). Each ISO is tested and
because I can't afford to constantly impact my MBR, my partition table
and burn a CD each time I generate a new ISO, I simply do the basic
testing in a VM. Once everything's 100% fine within the VM, then I test
it on CD with a real computer. 

- At work, under Windows, to get a Linux environment. 

- In Linux Mint x64 I'v got an i386 Linux Mint VM, so I can compile for
amd64 in there. 

- Because we're multitrack (latest release: Mint 6 and latest LTS
release: Mint 5) I need to keep a box for each system. So that's 4
boxes: 1 Mint 5, 1 Mint 6, 1 Mint 5 x64 and 1 Mint 6 x64. Having all
these in VMs simplifies things a great deal. 

Reviewers use VMs a lot. You can tell on their screenshots during
installation as the hard-drive is called Vmware or something, or when
the resolution is low. There are two reasons for them to use VMs: 

- It saves hassle. Guys like TechieMoe hardly spend more than 30 minutes
on a new system they review. But they want to review as many releases as
possible. So they don't want to waste time with CDs, partitions and all.
I'm not even sure they actually perform an install. 

- Vmware lets you take screenshots of the content of the VM. That's
particularly handy to capture images of the boot sequence... Otherwise
you'd basically have to take a picture of the screen with your camera :)

Now, there are a lot of great tools on the market. The best one is still
VMWare Workstation though. Among other things it comes with great USB
support, screenshots (I think it even lets you take videos), bridged
networking...etc. Virtualbox is also a very good product. It's got less
options but it works very well. In my opinion these are the only two
user-friendly options on the market, but if you're into looking deeper,
there's a lot more in there :)

Clem.

-----Original Message-----
From:
linuxmint-podcast-project-bounces+clement.lefebvre=ericsson.com@xxxxxxxx
unchpad.net
[mailto:linuxmint-podcast-project-bounces+clement.lefebvre=ericsson.com@
lists.launchpad.net] On Behalf Of Charles Olsen
Sent: 23 December 2008 01:23
To: Linux Mint Podcast List
Subject: [Linuxmint-podcast-project] Future show - virtual machines

In the near future -- possibly, but not likely, mintCast episode 4 -- I
want to address VMs. As Linux users, the most likely use I see for us is
if we just HAVE to run one or more Windows programs that we can't live
without, and the software does not run in Wine or Crossover.

I haven't done much of that, though I'm about to download Virtualbox and
start fooling around with it.

Are any of you using VMs? And would you like to discuss them in the
podcast?

If you can't (or don't want to) make a recording yourself, you could
write up some notes and send them to me to use.

Ideally, I'd like to talk about more than one VM solution.

Let me know what you think, and what you can contribute.

Thanks,

Charles

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