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Skriven 2011-08-22 18:58:16 av FidoNews Robot (1:1/1.0)
Ärende: FidoNews 28:34 [02/07]: Editorial
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                                 EDITORIAL
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     This week Andrew Leary writes in with an article on virtualizing your
     BBS.  I've actually been working on this recently myself, and thought
     I'd share a few notes.

     Firstly, virtualization is great if you have a processor that's made
     for it.  Unfortunately, both my computers are aged just a bit before
     that.  My desktop machine is just powerful enough to play streaming
     videos for the kiddos, as well as hosting my VOIP.  I used to keep the
     BBS on that machine, but there's always the one or two things I'd need
     to do at the console, and I hate to disturb them when they're watching
     their favorite show.

     I decided to virtualize and run the board under my Ubuntu on my Acer
     netbook.  These netbooks are nifty machines for the price, but a
     little underpowered when it comes to something like virtualization.
     The Atom processor included on these was not designed for that, and so
     all virtualization is done in software.  I decided to start low.

     I run Synchronet BBS, which is a Win32 BBS platform, so I started with
     Windows 98 in VirtualBox OSE.  Win98 run rather sluggishly, probably
     because it's built on Microsoft's DOS.  I didn't spend much time on it
     due to how unresponsive it was.

     I thought about installing XP, but that seemed a bit overkill for the
     moment, and went with Windows 2000 Professional.  The install and
     initial customization went great, as well as the initial run of the
     board.  Problems started coming when the VM was running for a while.
     Win32 apps continued to function decently, but MSDOS and Win32 console
     apps would slow to a crawl.  I figure this was probably some kind of
     bug in VirtualBox, and it got bad enough that I decided to scrap it
     and start with something new.

     I decided to try setting up with QEMU, but ran into problems with the
     launcher that is included with it in Ubuntu.  Then, when trying to use
     the qemu-ctl control panel, that didn't want to work right either.
     Finally, I played around with running QEMU manually.  In the end, I
     decided this was just too much work for something that these days
     should "just work".

     In the end, I decided to reinstall Windows XP directly on my netbook.
     I like running Linux, but until I get a more powerful machine to be
     able to virtualize Windows well, I'm stuck running Windows.
     VirtualBox just does not handle 16bit apps well enough on its own;
     perhaps someone with a processor designed for VM's could comment on
     whether those apps run better on them.

     If you're running Linux and are thinking of using VirtualBox for only
     one or two apps, I would suggest trying dosbox, dosemu, or wine
     depending on your need.  Dosemu and wine ran great for some of my
     needs; my problem was simply the multitude of non-Linux apps I'm
     using, with no time for learning something new at the moment.
     I hope this helps for those who may have older hardware like me!

     Gary Perkins


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