ubuntu virtualization options when no HW virt support?

[Christopher Chan]

On Sunday, June 27, 2010 11:12 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 27 June 2010 14:44, Loïc Grenié<loic.grenie at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> 2010/6/27 Liam Proven<lproven at gmail.com>:
>> [snip]
>>> KVM just uses hardware virtualisation to run VMs on x86-64 CPUs with
>>> Intel VT or AMD-V. This is relatively easy, but the programmers needed
>>> a whole set of code to create&  manage VMs. They took this code from
>>> QEMU since it was right there&  FOSS.
>>
>>     KVM is independent of x86-64.
>
> Yes, it is, true, but are there any 32-bit only x86 CPUs which have
> Intel VT or AMD-V?
>
>> [snip]
>>> Summary: if you want to run arbitrary PC OSs under desktop Linux, your
>>> choices are:
>>>   - FOSS VirtualBox (free, in Ubuntu repos, limited)
>>>   - full Virtualbox (freeware, Ubuntu packages available on website)
>>>   - VMware Player (freeware, Ubuntu packages available on website, limited)
>>>
>>> Or pay for VMware Workstation.
>>>
>>> If you want to virtualise servers, or on a server, and thus don't
>>> really care too much about friendly GUIs, your options are:
>>>   - Xen (FOSS - needs h/w virt'n to run arbitrary OS)
>>>   - KVM (FOSS - needs h/w virt'n to run at all)
>>>   - VMware Server (closed source freeware, needs no h/w virt'n)
>>
>>     Just curious: why do you make KVM a "server" solution ?
>
> To be honest, I have never even looked at it - I do not own, nor ever
> have owned, a PC with a virtualisation-capable CPU. I was under the
> impression that it did not have a GUI or anything, nor did it support
> features like guest additions, shared mouse pointers or clipboards,
> disk or file sharing between guest and host etc.

KVM is managed by the same tool that is used for xen guests...libvirt 
and virt-manager and friends.


>
> Given that there are free solutions that do all this, it would seem to
> me to be something aimed at places where such functionality is not
> important. That is, servers, mainly. That is the only place and role
> where I have heard of people running it, as far as I can remember.
>

I use KVM for Windows XP over here and I have said that on the list 
(more than a year ago though) but maybe I am in the minority.