David Latham

I usually use the KVM on my linux host for Virtualisation. It's default with Fedora and I know it. Usually ... Today I thought I would try the Ubuntu 10.4 Beta 1 on VirtualBox. I installed the latest VirtualBox ( version 3.1.6 ) and then had a crack at installing the Ubuntu 10.4 64bit. Of course an error came up saying that while AMD-v was enabled, it was not operational. After much googleling about, I found that the KVM modules were causing VirtualBox issues with access. So a quick "rmmod kvm_amd" and "rmmod kvm" fixed it. Next time I want to use KVM, I will need to re-enable these with, I suppose, a quick, "insmod kvm_amd" and "insmod kvm"

A little while ago ( like when I first installed my 4Gb of RAM ) I thought I might give VMWARE server a try. VMWARE server is available for free from http://www.vmware.com/download/server/ . Needless to say it didn't work. There was an issue with compiling the 64bit modules for networking with the kernel and kernel-devel packages at the time. Happily, Fedora has updated the kernel and kernel-devel packages and the issue is gone! Last week I gave it another go and now have VMWare Server running smoothly on my Fedora PC. I use it for a range of different things and prefer it to Qemu for a range of different reasons. My list of VMWare pros over Qemu: VMWare is very good at sharing host resources amongst the guests. One can assign more virtual memory to each guest and have them run concurrently without incurring exorbitant overhead costs. VMWare deals with bridged networking without much input from the person behind the keyboard. All I had to do was tell VMWare server that my gue...