Is Linux 3.13, the worst kernel version, ever? YES! It is... So, why Trust come with it? WHY!?

[Liam Proven]

On 5 August 2014 15:33, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> QEMU and KVM obscure?!


Well, actually, seriously, yes! They're server-centric tools for
professionals who know what they're doing.

Ubuntu is primarily a *desktop* distro. The main FOSS desktop
hypervisor is, I'd say, VirtualBox and the main freeware proprietary
one VMware Player. Then, after that, Microsoft VirtualPC and Hyper-V.

As I discovered in $JOB-1, KVM is no help at all if, for example, what
you're doing is documenting a distro which uses GNOME Shell as its UI.
GNOME Shell requires hardware OpenGL acceleration to run in a usable
fashion. (So does Unity.) KVM doesn't provide that -- it's aimed at
running server instances with no GUI.

VirtualBox does this quite well if you install the Guest Additions.

So even inside a prominent Linux vendor, which ships KVM as its
standard hypervisor, for the copany's own tech writers,  VirtualBox is
a better, more suitable tool.

I am not saying there's anything wrong with KVM -- it's a fine tool,
for its purpose. However, if you're a desktop user and you want to try
out different distros, or run a single Windows app that you need (e.g.
IE or Silverlight), then KVM is really not much help at all.

If you want to test ARM code on a virtual ARM machine, or you want to
run virtual servers containing databases and groupware and web apps,
then KVM is just the ticket -- but I suspect that the typical Ubuntu
user doesn't actually want or need that.

And personally, I don't want or need it, whereas I do need to evaluate
distros quite regularly -- e.g. for this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/26/xbuntu_round_up/

I used VirtualBox /extensively/ for that, but KVM wouldn't have helped me.


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