Trials, Travails, and Triumphs
pete.home.local (nee “The Cooler Master” or more shortly “cooler”) is my AMD-based “gaming” machine, although I do little to no gaming on it. It was also a Media Center computer, but now it doesn’t have a TV tuner card.
Pete is having an identity crisis.
I wanted him to be a Linux music manager, but I couldn’t get the sound card working in Linux (in fact, I’m even having trouble with that in Windows).
I wanted him to virtualize Windows in VMWare, VirtualBox, or Xen, but he lacks the CPU optimizations (missed them by a few months) for Xen to work with Windows. VMWare lacks the sensible installer to work in Linux. VirtualBox worked fine (great, actually, quite impressive), but the sound card issue on the host side (meaning Linux) was pretty much a deal-breaker.
So now, apparently, I am dual-booting between Windows XP MCE (no more Vista!) and some form of Linux or OpenSolaris. The Windows side is for games, iPods (Kristin’s and mine), and Windows-only stuff. The Linux/Solaris side is for backups and Java/Python development.
Anyway, what a weekend trying to find out what virtualization stuff works in Linux!