Ubuntu and Virtual Box and Windows running INSIDE.

[Chris Elston]

Wow...just installed the new open source Virtual Box on in my Ubuntu linux machine....AMAZING.. I installed Windows 2000 inside Linux. Runs like a CHAMP. The only downfall I see so far is no native access to the PCI bus. In other words, I have a Geovision 16 channel card in this box, and the Windows 2000 could not detect it because it's running as a virtual guest on the linux host so it does not have access to the PCI bus. The video card drivers are a bit hokie too, but work.... Still pretty amazing for a free VM (virtual machine) software package.

[BobLfoot]

Does being a guest affect access to PCMCIA, USB and serial hardware also? Also curious how and if you get Rslinx and Rslogix to run on the 2000 guest system.

[PdL]

Looks very good Chako! How about the resources it uses ? I have installed MS Virtual PC 2007 recently and must say I was very impressed. First time I used virtual machine so no real experience.

[beegee]

Hi Chako, Nice.... how about the performance and stability? I have a SUSE 10.2 X64 with Vitual Box installed but I still have to install a Windows version onto it. (is still on my todo list) I have a few questions before I start installing XP or 2000 on it. Did you need to have a disk formatted in NTFS or is this also being emulated by Virtualbox? Can you access your serial ports (for programming purposes)? beegee

[Chris Elston]

They just got the USB part working ok last week sometime. I bet the PCMCIA is in the same boat as PCI bus...and the serial isn't working that great for me...I'd say >no< to serial support using Virtual Box...

[Crossbow]

Virtual PC is OK. But it doesn't support any USB devices which require special drivers. So no USB comms to PLCs. VMware does allow USB drivers, and I have been online with Modicon Momentum, Siemens Logo and S7-200, and ALL Mitsubishi PLCs through virtual PCs running Windows 2000.

[Nathan]

I'm not sure about Virtual Box's policy decisions. It's come up that VMWare made the decision not to support PCMCIA. I heard this secondhand and would love to be proven wrong. I have no idea how tough that would be for them to implement.

[Chris Elston]

It's very stable. No crashes yet in either host or guest.. I've been loading in software and no problems yet. I was not able to get RS LINX to work, even though the serial port "seems" to be there. So at this point, no go there. I don't have an USB programming cables, so I can't test the usb support. The USB is working. I insert my flash drive into the box, and Linux picks it up, and Windows picks it up at the same time. What's freaky is when I copy a file from Linux on to my flash drive, it instantlly appears in the Windows guest. I bet the Windows Box if it had a mind, would freak out...speaking of which in that same frame of mind, if the Windows box had a mind, it would be considered a "matrix"....it's well emulated for sure... I guess why I am impressed is because Virtual Box is free compared to VMware, like everyone likes to use. I like it when free stuff works well. When I installed Windows 2000, it was like booting a new PC, I booted from a cd-rom, and it installed. When it came time to format the drive during setup, I choose NTFS. I did not "physically" create a partition on my "real" hard drive. All you do is allocated how much space in Virtual Box, I allocated 20 GB. So "virtually" it formated a hard drive of 20 GB, to NTFS, but my orginal hard drive still is ext2 partition.

[PdL]

What I like about MS Virtual PC 2007 is that you can drag&drop / copy&paste files directly from host to guest. Or is that common for a virtual PC ? On the other hand I guess it is not so impressive for a MS virtual PC in an MS host system against a MS virtual PC in a non-MS host system...

[beegee]

If you like free Virtual machines, you could also check out QEMU. I have been told by a "real freak" that the possibilities and speed of QEMU are better but you would have to be more qualified to get it working....

[Clay B.]

I just got a new laptop and use VMware for a Win 98 laptop I had that finnaly died. I must say I really like it. I am able to connect to some older equipment whose software will not run on anything newer. I also have RSlogix 500 and RSlogix 5 and both are able to use the Serial port. I have not tried my PCMA slot yet but I can connect to my memory sticks and floppy drives thru USB. Having 2 machines in one is awesome if not just a bit discerning. Wonder if I can get a dual serial port machine and just dedicate one port to my virtual machine.