I've taken a job working in a Windows shop doing application support. Having been out of the Windows world for a good while I'm finding it frustrating on a number of fronts but the pay cheque does help to take the edge of it! In order to improve my skills for work and also for my own interest I've just bought a new rig and... a copy of Vista64    As much as I am ashamed at my move (I feel dirty for having done it!) I've got to get on with learning Windows technologies but was just after opinions on the best way to configure my rig as a learning environment.
 
My main quandry is what to run as the base OS. My original plan was to install Vista64 and run everything else in VM's however I've been reviewing this idea. Ubuntu runs nicely on the new rig and seeing as I have reasonable experience with it I'm wondering about running Ubuntu 8.04 x64 as the base and actually registering my OEM Vista64 as a VM installation. My thinking is that I'd be better able to backup and blast test configurations if I did it that way. I know that a few of the folks here run VM's and I'm darn sure that some of you run XP and Vista. Do any of you see any problems or serious restrictions in running Vista in a VM? I'm more after playing with IIS7, SQL Express and other windows technologies than having a Windows install to game on so loosing accelerated grahics is not a huge loss to me. VM wise I'll almost certainly go with VMWare Server. Whilst not open source it works well and gives me a grounding in a very widely used solution. It also means I can use machine images from work. I'll likely be having a play with the trial version of Server 2008 at some point and I'll want to play with Active directory with a Vista and XP client.
 
I know this isn't strictly a Linux question but I'd be interested to hear what some of the residents here think. Alternative suggestions would also interest me...

You're right on!
 
Ubuntu it + VMW + vmdk's for each OS on top.
 
Save all of the vmdk's after the initial install so when windows self destructs you can restore
 
Install QEMU, WINE and Xen too for some OSS goodness

I run XP in VirtualBox on my Ubuntu machine. It's good for those few programs that won't run in Linux, and it means my windows install is safe from viruses and spyware   I use to run VMWare, but I've recently shifted to virtual box because it doesn't seem to break as often as VMWare (The moment a new kernal comes out, VMware goes A over T) and it seems a lot quicker on my system. Was a lot easier to install too. Only issue I have with it is that I can't get Solidworks 2007 to work in it    
 
So yesh, Ubuntu as your base, Virtualise your Vista. Have a backup snapshot and your set for when Vista falls over!  

Ah yes, I too left VMWare after their issues with new kernel releases.  Since I've setup KVM/QEMU on my laptop for my virtualization needs.

Thanks guys. I just needed a push to head in that direction, fortunately Microsoft provided it for me last night.... I tried to install VMWare Server on the Vista64 install only to find that the 64bit network driver is unsigned and therefore will not install for me. Result - No VMWare for me on Vista64 I've suffered more 64Bit woes with the graphics drivers. My new rig is based on a  iG35 chipset  and the 64Bit drivers are utter crud. Compared to the 32Bit ones I get totally pap performance. I could go with Virtual PC but you don't get any USB support which just makes life more awkward.
 
I'm typing this from my freshly installed Ubuntu 8.04 64Bit. I've just stuck it on an old EIDE drive I'd forgotten I'd got in the parts bin. So far things look reasonably good although I've yet to try installing the Intel driver support. The CPU is an E8400 so I should have good performance with VM's as it supports VT extensions and is proving to be reasonably speedy. I was going to go with VMWare but now I'm not so sure. I can relate to the kernel update issues but they don't seem to be that frequent to cause me that much pain.  
 
I guess the question now moves to which VM solution to go with. I've only ever had QEMU running a couple of times and missed the nice front end of VMWare.

QEMU is easy to install, just make sure you install kqemu -- the kernel acceleration module.
 
It will work without it but it will be slow.
 
You should be able to apt-get QEMU itself and perhaps kqemu as well.
 
GL

I had a look at KVM last night. I don't think I've seen an application with that many command line options in a loooong time! I've also realised that all is not happy with my graphics conifguration under Ubuntu. The G53 chipset drivers are still under development; at least Intel have released the specs so eventually things should be sorted. I've still got to read up on this but apparently I can roll my own drivers by compiling the GIT sources.
 
Any recommendations on a GUI for either QEMU or KVM?

qemu-launcher
 
GUI for QEMU.
 
Check it out.

I would imagine your budget is still tight but I would suggest looking into an ATI or nVidia VGA
 
The latest ATI VGA was released with Linux drivers on the CD.

The whole idea of getting a X3500 graphics solution was for a genuine open source solution and low power requirements. I'm loathed to replace a Open GL 2.0 / DX10 compliant IGS with a low end card. Under the 32Bit XP drivers it can post some impressive scores in 3dMark06 etc from the reviews I read before buying. That having been said it would remove the 450FSB restriction you get using an IGS I'm still not a fan of ATI but that's just a personal thing.
 
I'll check out launcher... the only thing that concerns me with QEMU is that the accelerator module is actually closed source so not much better than VMWare in my opinion. I'll accept that you do not HAVE to use the module but the performance sucks without it.
 
 
 

Agreed on the kqemu sentiments, I use the modified QEMU that supports KVM and I get near-native performance on most applications, so you can still get good performance with completely open code.  I'm unsure if qemu-launcher supports the modified qemu as I've never tried it, however I don't see why it wouldn't as it supports all of the same commandline arguments.
 
edit: of course you need a CPU with virtualization extensions and a kernel with built-in support or the proper modules loaded.

I had a quick play with qemu-launcher last night. It's not a bad option although I have to say nowhere near as slick as VMWare Server. I'll need to do some more testing with it and see what I think. I'm just having a look at KVM and the options it would give.  Do you have any more info on the modified QEMU that you require? I've had a hunt in Ubuntu and suspect I'm out of luck for it being in the repositries. Also as with Qemu I'll need a front end (Yes, I'm a GUI wus!). Proxmox looks rather tasty if almost certainly more than I need.
 

This post should get you squared away.  It appears that the repositories offer up the modified one automatically as it will fall back to normal operation if it detectes that your sydstem doesn't support KVM.

Thanks for the link  
 
I'm having a look through some of the ubuntu specific links from it.  
 
I've checked and I have VT support with my E8400. I'm on x64 so it can use all of my 4GB of RAM and seem to have the basic components in place. I can see the advantages of using KVM so I'll push on and get some testing done. I'll let you know how I get on...
 

hmm well im probably very late into this but, since you built a new computer, i would have ubuntu installed on the old machine, with vmware server, then on your new machine simply run vmware console, at least this way you don't clot up your new HDD with vm images, its what i run at home, and have these vm machines installed:

Windows Small Business Server,
Windows Vista 32bit,
Windows server 2008,
M0n0wall < currently always on as our firewall.
and a few XP clients for testing with the servers.

although the damn server is more powerful than my pc with 1.3tb of space and 4GB of ram running a core2, running Linux, Ubuntu.

Just a quick update, I've recently been trying out VirtualBox (the non-open one and the open one as well), and I must say I'm impressed.  It has many of the same features of VMWare server (or practically all if you go with the non-free version, just missing some of the virtual networking complexity).  Then add to that either FOSS-ness or faster speed (yes, I feel that the non-free VirtualBox is faster than VMWare Server).  Yet another option to try out.

I've to say I'm none to impressed with VMware at the monent. The 64bit network drivers are not signed so no joy on Vista64. The beta of version two is refusing to work with ASP errors that I've yet to bottom out, I'm not sure I even want to bother from what I read about the perfornamce of the new web based client.
 
I've ended up having to run Vista native, the reason for this is that I need to use some of the demo MS pre built machines and as we currently use MS Vitrual Server at work Virtual PC is actually easier all round. I might yet try getting VMWare Server Beta2 running on Ubuntu and importing some of the machines but I'm spending less time on the system at home at the min. A combination of summer and too many hours in work means I'm just less inclined to play...
 
The problem with VirtualPC on windows is that it hates linux  That and it's from the evil empire... otherwise it works quite well.

Just out of curiosity, what is giving you trouble with VirtualPC on windows?When I was taking my microarchitecture class, we had to do all of our programming on Linux, and whereas I was perfectly fine working in a straight up linux environment, my MS loving friend went with VirtualPC on Vista and installed a copy of Ubuntu Ultimate edition which seemed to work ok for him.  I know anecdotal evidence is not good evidence, but I was just wondering why it would seem to work ok for him and not you. Perhaps you were trying to do things much more complex than we were doing?
 
-Zorak

VPC is just evil.
 
Almost the day after MS bought VPC linux support went downhill and I can assure you it was not a coincidence.
 
It's sad.