running virtualization on eee/umpc. experiences?

[bobblanchett]

My first post. please be gentle

I fall over a lot. long story(no im not pissed!)

so a umpc/eee with a internal/external ssd is what I'm looking at.

The thing is I have to use windows sometimes.(xp and up

what joy/experiences have people had with guest vm's running on a linux host on eee or other UMPCs, using whatever hypervisor(parallels/xen/qemu/virtual box)

How has the usb, sound and networking support for guest vm's been?

is anyone booting guests off of USB flash/HDD?

If a eee/10" netbook isn't sufficient I'd be interested to know of 15" and smaller UMPC's with RAM capacity that might prove suitable.

my hunch is a UMPC would struggle virtualizing a single W2k8 guest or recent windows client OS. has anyone tried?


Cheers and Go Dons.

Bob

[power]

whatever you do, it'll be slow.....

RAM and CPU will limit you most.

[Menthu_Rae]

I run Ubuntu 8.04 w/array.org kernel on my EeePC 901... I use VirtualBox to run a 30GB Windows XP Pro Virtual Machine off an 80GB USB 2.5" HDD.

All I use it for is Office 2007 and Uni programming using Xilinx/MPLab. It runs fast enough, I can run the VM fullscreen on a 2nd monitor and use the main EeePC screen as normal.

It's fast enough for what I do and if I fullscreen it on the EeePC screen, you wouldn't really be able to tell it's in a virtual machine (unless you tried something that needs 3D accel ).

Even when using the VM, I can still go about playing music/movies (non HD sources) and browsing the net in Ubuntu.

FWIW I have 2GB RAM and the 2.5" HDD is just some cheapy samsung thing I bought a few years ago/have spare.

[bobblanchett]

Thanks Menthu,

I'll fit much the same usage profile, I have to do a lot of powershell programming right now but would prefer a linux host and the option to run a guest OS where possible.

Hows the VM XP guest managed with sound and USB devices?

solid problematic or non-existent?

[Menthu_Rae]

Originally Posted by bobblanchett

Thanks Menthu,

I'll fit much the same usage profile, I have to do a lot of powershell programming right now but would prefer a linux host and the option to run a guest OS where possible.

Hows the VM XP guest managed with sound and USB devices?

solid problematic or non-existent?

Sound is OK, it garbles a bit on the XP bootup/login sound but otherwise it's fine.

USB is great. I programmed the PIC/CPLD in my DSX kit through XP using virtualbox's USB filter/passthrough options Worked flawlessly.

Just note that you have to add the virtualbox/usb users group to your username and also turn on the usbfs support (all in ubuntu) and possibly disable USB2.0 controller (in virtualbox). Can link you to the threads/info necessary later/on weekend.