Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look into it.
Hi CyberCiphers,
I am using VMware Workstation and VirtualBox for development and system testing, both products are similar and capable. However, VMware Workstation is still better than VirtualBox on peripheral devices recognition, especially on USB devices. I know many people think $199 (without support) price tag of VMware Workstation is high, as VirtualBox is free, but in my point of view, it is worth every single penny.
The benefit of virtualization system is clear, it is much easier to backup it, much safe to upgrade it and much easier to transfer it to different hardware. If you have experience to transfer/upgrade a real system from old hardware to new hardware, you must know what I mean ‘much easier’.
Cheers,
Athens
Gulp ! (me choking on my drink) …VMware @ $199 per unsupported seat … perpetual with upgrades for how long ? or subscripiton license ? taxes included ?
Unless you need a bare-metal hypervisor it seems a tad extravagant given the current performance, ease-of-use, FOSS-ness and capabilities of kvm/qemu…particularly when you throw in the flexibility that comes with qcow2 images.
I’ve used VirtualBox in the past and while 5 - 7 yrs ago it was definitely easier than kvm/qemu I wouldn’t bother with it today unless I had to use a host OS that didn’t run kvm/qemu but did support VirtualBox.
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Yes, although the new hype is containers.
I got into virtualization bit over a decade ago – with kvm/qemu as that was readily available (in CentOS 5). Saw no reason to try the other products. Two bare-metal servers that can host all critical VMs in a pinch and live migration possible; migrate all to one, update other bare-metal host, re-migrate all to it, update the other host, and rebalance the load. Shiny.
OK Now for some Good News. Unless you need all the bells and whistles of VMare Workstations and are prepared to pony up the $199, there is something called
VMware Workstation 16 Player which allows you to create and run Virtual Machines, and its cost? $0.00 aka FREE. This assumes you are an individual not some company.
This is licensed under The Personal Use License. I find that this is more than enough for me… and the price is right!
CentOS Stream is free. There is RHEL subscription that has $0.00 price. There is Oracle Linux that has $0.00 price.
Some think that the small print takes your soul and therefore the $0.00 is not right …
Likewise, the kvm/qemu is included in Rocky with similar $0.00 price.
Well there are those who do not have $199 to give to VMware for a license for VMware Workstation 16 Pro. VMware has been a Standard for years and in my evolution I learned to use VMware. While VMware Workstation 16 Player does not have all the bells and whistles, of Workstation Pro, it does the job. I’ve been using Player ever since VMware first introduced it – many, MANY years ago. The Personal Use License was designed for people like me: I use it to test some OS’s , or try and direct my sister what might be her Windows Problem (M$ tm hehehehe). I can’t justify spending $$ for software I only occasionally use. Nor do I have to re-learn the process I learned in Player how to do.
…channeling your inner yoda I see …
Your TCO will never be free given the time you invest which might render the $199 negligible if VMWare had advantages… but I can’t see anything to suggest VMware is a better, or even the right, choice for someone who isn’t already familiar with it.
RHEL are very much pushing kvm here*, Amazon hypervisors are based on kvm and Oracle suggest kvm is winning** out over VMware.
Harder to find pro VMware material but I did find this VMWare doc from 2011 - things have changed since, rendering one argument incorrect but their main argument was spurious to begin with.
*Although there is some strange stuff in there about kvm being on Windows platforms.
** May include proprietary Oracle products
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The good thing with kvm, the module is default in the kernel, no extra work. With vmware player/workstations/whatever, each time your kernel is upgraded, the modules have to be compiled every single time to work with the new kernel. Not needed with kvm. So less hassle. Similar with virtualbox and guest additions, each time you upgrade, have to download and install the new guest additions. Not needed with kvm or kvm vms - qemu-guest-agents installed by default and get upgraded when updates are applied to the vm’s. So by default, accessible without any extra effort or manual tasks to complete.
But each to their own, if you prefer virtualbox, vmware player/workstation. I much prefer less effort, and more time to spend on real tasks.
We have used Fedora Desktops in our firm, then swithced to CentOs, and now Rocky. I think we have two Microsoft machines and the rest are a mixxture of Centos, Rocky, and RaspberryPi’s. The RaspberryPi usually has the most updated software, but Rocky is the most stable.
Greg Ennis
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RaspberryPi!! YUM!! Still I prefer KeyLimePi, CherryPi, and ApplePi.
Heh – I caution you against running “dnf update” on that platform running KDE Plasma. I’m pretty sure that’s how I fell into a rathole with RL v8.6.
I run Rocky Linux on the iron of the machine I use all day every day.
I’m currently using KDE/Plasma as my desktop environment. I thought that was mainstream, but apparently not. Since the latest RL update seems to break KDE/Plasma, I’m looking at migrating to Gnome.
I run Windows10 pro on that platform as a guestVM. I use VirtualBox as a hypervisor, but I’m investigating kvm/qemu. I’m no fan of Oracle, I landed on VirtualBox after a horrific experience with VMWare.
I do not need or want “cutting edge” on my desktop or server platform. I spend all day every day doing cutting edge development in areas that interest me and occasionally pay my bills. The underlying OS and desktop is “not strategic” for me (to use parlance from a prior life as a consultant for IBM). I know enough about each (OS and desktop) to know that ANY change is incredibly hard, tedious, and likely to break things in unpredictable ways. Bill Gates is rumored to have said that “OS programming is like pulling a loose thread on your label and having your pants fall down”.
I have enough time and money invested in Centos in general and RockyLinux in particular that I’m strongly motivated to continue using it.
I hope that I can find a stable desktop environment – this most recent v8.6 rollout has drawn more of my attention than I wanted to give.
Too late. After Rocky 8.6 did its thing, the KDE Plasma GUI was as dead as a doornail. Unfortunately, that particular unit (ThinkPad Helix) is problematic. I’ve tried running Debian and/or Debian variants on it (e.g. Q4OS), but the video drivers don’t seem to function properly. I won’t be running Rocky on it either if I have to rebuild the machine every time there’s an update. BTW, Distribution Watch is reporting that Red Hat has already released version 9.
Red Hat did (pre)annouce the release at Red Hat Summit last week. RHEL 9 packages became awailable yesterday, AFAIK. EPEL should have some content for 9 already thanks to having built for rather similar CentOS Stream 9 for a while now.
That obviously does not solve the issues between RHEL 8.6 and EPEL. In fact, the opposite – EPEL maintainers have now both 8.6 and 9.0 demanding their attention.
With the comments how 8.6 breaks KDE/Plasma, anyone upgrade to 8.6 that use XFCE.
Makes me a little hesitant to upgrade. (BTW, I am using XFCE as my main DE.)
Still on 8.4, on the verge of moving to 8.5, see 8.6, think I’ll skip 8.5 and then I see the KDE issues - I have no interest in ****ing around with another DE. I like KDE. …
…but then I see in the bug notes that recreating the problem requires you login via gdm and lock the screen: “To check screen lock problem, log in via gdm, then lock screen”. I don’t use gdm, I only use sddm so maybe this isn’t really a problem ? … I won’t get around to checking that for a day or 2 if anyone else wants to jump in in the meantime.
A quote from an April 1st article on “KNOME”: “We see ending desktop fragmentation as the key to Linux success” … (naturally we’d want to standardise on KDE)
EDIT
OK, I see from other posts/threads that sddm is broken too so I suppose I’ll just stop at 8.5 'till it gets fixed.
It’s been around for 25yrs - longer than GNOME - and the only reason GNOME exists and has market share is because there were FOSS licensing concerns with Qt and hence KDE. afaik. I think KDE will win out in the end. Don’t think it’s going away anyway.
“I’m currently using KDE/Plasma as my desktop environment. I thought that was mainstream, but apparently not. Since the latest RL update seems to break KDE/Plasma, I’m looking at migrating to Gnome.”
Ah!!! I’m using KDE Plasma / X11, and had all types of unfortunate things happen during the rollover. I wonder what would happen if I logged into say GNOME X11 and ran the update from within GNOME, but then when I rebooted ocelot then switched back to KDE Plasma / X11? I wonder if I could avoid the problem/s with KDE?
Now the question becomes do people running GNOME X11 have problems when they rollover their machines.
I think I’m going to sit tight for the next week or two while 8.6 gets a slew of new updates – that’s almost a given from what I am reading – before I then try to rollover ocelot once again… with fingers crossed. Clearly 8.6 is NOT ready for Prime Time… at least right NOW!!
D’ Cat
Hummmmm. Another KDE user bites the dust. I’m running KDE as well and ran into a slew of problems when I did the rollover of my new WS ocelot.
Perchance did you do a backup of your drive before you did the rollover? If so you can rollback to 8.5; if NOT – Sorry dude you are facing doing either a total reinstall of 8.5, or doing a NEW install of 8.6 in rolling the dice in hopes that a install from scratch may solve the problem.
D’ Cat – also in the same KDE boat