vmware & breezy

[chris dunn]

Steve wrote:

> On 10/27/05, Upayavira <uv at odoko.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>chris dunn wrote:
>>
>>>Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On 10/26/05, Lars Noldan <lnoldan at jdrweb.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>I would like to inquire if anyone on this list has sucessfully installed
>>>>>vmware 5.0 on breezy badger.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I just updated our wiki with instructions how to install vmware on
>>>>breezy: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VmWare
>>>>
>>>>Please mail me if there are still questions open.
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>regards,
>>>>    Reinhard
>>>
>>>
>>>This is good, and has been followed. VMware 5.0 seems to run with no
>>>difficulty under Ubuntu as a host.
>>>
>>>Then Windows XP SLOW was installed as a guest on the Ubuntu / VMware host.
>>>
>>>The installation took about 8 hours which is a tad more than I thought
>>>it took under Slackware previously. Unfortunately I need to run WXP.
>>>
>>>Having successfully installed WXP as a guest it now takes approximately
>>>one hour to reach the start button, and any attempt to actually do
>>>anything from there takes even longer.
>>>
>>>Has anybody else had similar difficulty or am I alone?
>>
>>I'm happily using VMWare on Hoary, and apart from large compiles, it is
>>pretty snappy. However, I have 2Gb of RAM. When I was accidentally
>>running on 800Mb of ram, it was a real pig. Could RAM be your problem?
>>
>>Regards, Upayavira
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I run VMware Workstation 5.0 on Ubuntu Hoary. I have 512MB of RAM on
> an AMD AthlonXP 2500+ and an Asus A7N8X-X motherboard (NVidia NForce2
> chipset).
> 
> I run WinXPPro in VMware with default allocation of 192MB RAM, and it
> is QUICK. This is even with large spreadsheets (>10MB) in excel, large
> Visio drawings (>10MB), AutoCAD drawings, etc. Firefox in XP as well
> with many tabs open. Sure it is not quite as fast (in calculations,
> etc.) as booting into native WinXPPro OS, but there is no noticeable
> latency when moving around and opening apps.
> 
> Did you successfully install VMware Tools in the Guest OS? Are you
> really low on RAM (as Upayavira mentioned)? I can't think of any other
> reasons it would be THAT slow... what CPU do you have? What type of
> partition did you install the Guest OS on? Did you install it on a
> networked drive?
> 
> Good luck... I just wanted to share my experience with VMware so you
> know that it *is* supposed to work.
> 
> -Steve.
> --
> Ubuntu :: Linux for Human Beings :: ubuntulinux.org
> 

Thanks for the inputs.

You lucky guys with adequate memory. I only have 256mb on a reasonably 
fast cpu but unfortunately the box is a Dell one. VMware and WXP did 
used to run happily (if fairly slowly) under Slackware though, so it 
seems unlikely to be the box alone that is creating the problem.

If it is a memory problem I suspect video memory more than cpu. The 
screen takes for ever to redraw, and when WXP is running under VMware, 
any operation in X, such as a simple change of desktop takes forever. So 
when VMware is trying to run WXP I'm completely unable to work.

The video memory is a cheap onboard Intel 845 chip.

Any suggestions would be welcome.


Chris Dunn