VMware under Linux on the Intel-based Macintosh
Written on February 21, 2006Recap
I reported yesterday that we (my friends Mark A. Smith and Benjamin Reed, and myself) had a full-fledged customized version of Knoppix running on the Intel-based Macintosh. Earlier, we had Linux booting on the Intel-based Macintosh, as reported here.
Windows XP on the Intel-based Macintosh: A Virtualized Possibility
We now have Windows XP running on the Intel-based Macintosh — as a guest operating system under the Linux version of VMware. This is quite exciting and promising, especially since the performance of Windows XP seems quite amazing (based on our limited test run so far) — mind you, the kernel and the environment we are using are experimental and unoptimized, so it would not be unreasonable to expect even better performance.
To anybody who has used Windows XP under Virtual PC on the PowerPC version of Mac OS X: you will simply be blown away by how fast Windows XP runs under VMware on the new hardware.
Click on the pictures for larger versions.
What Next?
Please stay tuned for further updates. We intend to run some benchmarks comparing various virtual-environment installations of Windows XP (Virtual PC on the x86, Virtual PC on the PowerPC, VMware on the x86, and on real hardware).
Since we are trying out these things, we have so far been unable to find time to create a Knoppix distribution for general use — it is on our priority list :-)