Running windows programs under Linux

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Sun Aug 31 15:15:07 UTC 2014


At Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:50:06 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> > At Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:10:13 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >> On 08/29/2014 12:13 PM, Tom H wrote:
> >>>
> >>> The point was, and I mis-expressed myself, that I'm running kvm
> >>> without having a package named "*kvm*" installed.
> >>
> >> Maybe I missed something. How do you run a program if you don't have
> >> that program?
> >
> > kvm is not a 'program' (like Virtual Box or Parallels). It is *similar* to
> > Xen, in that it provides virtualization at a 'kernel' level, rather than via a
> > virtualization *program*. Both kvm and xen are 'native' (linux) virtualization
> > systems, unlike Virtual Box or Parallels or VMWare. Xen runs as a kind of
> > super-kernel with the host running as Dom0 -- that is your 'host' system is
> > itself a virtual machine that is connected to all of the bare metal hardware
> > (nothing is actually emulated). Kvm works differently in that there isn't a
> > hypervisor running independently of the host operating system. I believe Kvm
> > is directly supported by modern Linux kernels, in that the hypervisor logic is
> > embeded in the host kernel itself -- no additional packages are needed to have
> > Kvm functionallity.
> >
> > Both use a virtualization library (eg libvirt) and a hypervisor interface
> > module (eg qemu) to interface between the host system and the virtual machines
> > and virtual networks and virtual disks (if any). There is usually a CLI
> > interface (virsh) and maybe a GUI interface (virt-manager) and some other
> > assorted virt-<mumble> utilities and daemons. Both kvm and xen allow for using
> > 'real' disks (or in a realistic sense, logical partitions or logical volumns)
> > for the virtual machines, which is very handy for things like migration and/or
> > backup.
> >
> > So all you need to install is the hypervisor interface and support logic:
> > virsh, virt-manager, and the various support libraries and daemons. This would
> > be in packages like *qemu* or *libvirt* or virt-manager, none of which would
> > necessarily have 'kvm' as part of their names (they might depending on how
> > things might have been packaged). The only difference between kvm and xen is
> > that xen needs the super-kernel/hypervisor (xen itself, which requires
> > additional magic with grub using multiboot [grumble]), and needs a xen
> > capable kernel (modern Linux kernels include the xen support modules, etc.).
> 
> Thanks for saving me from having to write all of this! :)
> 
> One thing though: "virsh, virt-manager, and the various support
> libraries and daemons" aren't needed, strictly speaking but they're
> nice to have.

Well you need *something* to talk to the hypervisor in order to manage the VMs
:-), and "virsh, virt-manager, and the various support libraries and daemons"
are the standard / typical bits and pieces one would install on the host
system to provide the tools needed to talk to the hypervisor and to manage the
VMs and the virtual network(s), etc. 

> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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