The Linux Advocate

 

by Scott Dowdle
dowdle@icstech.net
ICQ UIN: 15509440

Column #45
May 7th, 1999
LOGIN:

Let's see... the last column I actually wrote (Ralph filled in for me on the last two), I had an uptime of 144 days. Man, the last three weeks have absolutely sucked. First of all, my wife has been put in a state hospital for up to 90 days due to depression and I'm a temporary single parent just trying to cope with it all. Secondly, my laptop died with some sort of power problem... because it would no longer turn on. I took it into a local computer shop and after looking at it, they decided that there must be a break or short in the motherboard somewhere... and that it is too costly to fix given its low value. I decided to take the hard drive out of it to put in my desktop but am having trouble locating a converter that will change the PCMCIA interfaced hard disk into standard IDE. My father was able to find one in Memphis (I sent him the original HD from the laptop when I last upgraded to a bigger one) but I'm in Billings, Montana... and here they have to do some research to find one. And lastly, I got demoted at work which lead to a 1/3rd drop in pay? Well, as you can see, it's not been a good last three weeks. I do like my new job a lot better than the last one though. Much nicer boss. :) In any event, I'm keeping my chin up. Pardon me for dumping my personal life here in the column but I thought it might help my readers to understand my lack of columns recently.


NEWS:

Item #1: Legendary inventor's computer comeback - Anyone remember Clive Sinclair? I remember him well because the first computer I ever owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 which was about the size of VHS tape, only a little shorter and wider. Anyway, supposedly Sir Clive is working on a Linux machine. Cool, huh? Check out one of the couple of stories I found on the subject at the
following URL: http://www.lineone.net/express/99/04/29/city/c0100splash-d.html

Item #2: NEC Launches New Linux Software - This is only one of several major software announcements I've found recently and I'm wondering why I include it... seeing as how they are coming so common place it is getting boring. Anyway, check out the following URL if you so desire: http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/04/30/news7.html

Item #3: Optimizing OpenGL drivers for Quake3 - For those who read fluent computer geek, the following very technical article about designing QuakeIII doing graphics with OpenGL. Pretty interesting article at the following URL: http://www.quake3arena.com/news/glopt.html

Item #4: Mindcraft II - You know how everyone griped at the Mindcraft study... well, it appears that they are going to do another one... but seeing as how it is funded by Microsoft, they don't appear to be taking much help from the Linux pros on how to optimize Linux for the test... and it will probably lead to Mindcraft III. Eventually, they are going to have to face the facts. Read some opinions of the situation at the following URLs: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/27/mindcraft/index.html
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5424.html


Item #5: Christian Science Monitor writes about Linux - The following is a rather healthy introductory article about Linux in the pages of Christian Science Monitor. I'm not that much of a fan of the publication, but I thought it was interesting that Linux has found it's way into that publication. Read for yourself at the following URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/04/29/p15s1.htm

Item #6: KDE Team releases KDE 1.1.1 - Figures, I was over at a friend's house and I was getting him all setup with Linux and so we go and download all 18MB of KDE 1.1. About an hour later, they release 1.1.1. :) I went home and picked myself up a copy. Read the news for yourself at the KDE site: Main site - http://www.kde.org
Press release for KDE 1.1 - http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-BW-1.1.1.html
Change log for 1.1.1 - http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelog1_1to1_1_1.html

Item #7: VMWARE ROCKS! - Not really a news article, just check out the following URL before you read the spotlight section: http://www.vmware.com

SPOTLIGHT: VMWARE ROCKS - No, no, really!

So, did you read http://www.vmware.com  from news item #7? If not, go do so now.

Ok, are you back now? Good.

I actually downloaded the latest beta test version of VMWARE for Linux and even though they say that they recommend a Pentium II with 128MB  of RAM for serious usage, I found it acceptable on a my Intel 200MHz with 32MB of RAM. Of course, I wasn't doing much other than running Windows 95 within Linux at the time and I know that if I was trying to run Windows 95 and multi-task the hell out of Linux, it would have bogged down pretty poorly with only 32MB of RAM.

Full screen mode is just amazing. When the OS you install (and it works with several, and you can even run multiple OSes at the same time) boots you see the BIOS screen and everything just like you would with the real experience. It was so real in fact that I could hardly tell the difference between a real powerup and VMWARE one other than the fact that the VMWARE logo is to the right of the Phoenix BIOS startup screen. Amazingly enough, you can even to into the BIOS setup within your virtual machine.

I choose to install Windows 95 within VMWARE (again, running in a window on my Linux X Window System desktop running KDE) because it's the only OS I had an install media for. Although installing Windows 95 from 15 floppy disks took forever (and it's the original version too), it worked rather well and I was simply amazed.

Getting logically out of order for a minute, I must say that the installation of VMWARE was a breeze. It is very polished looking and I was very impressed. I don't know how much it is going to cost when it gets out of beta but I'm going to buy a copy.

Some of the screenshots on the VMWARE site actually show running Windows 98 and Windows NT 4 at the same time on a Linux desktop. I even read about a dude who installed Linux within VMWARE just to see if you could run Linux within Linux.

As if what I've told you already wasn't amazing enough, and I'm sure you probably don't believe me at this point until you check it out for yourself, VMWARE has a networking feature whereby the various OSes running simultaneously can actually be networked together. I just installed it a day ago and I haven't gotten around to try networking my VMWAREd computers but I've read other places that it works great.

I was able to make a few screenshots but nothing too amazing yet. I took them during the windows install so they are pretty boring but you get the picture. I should have taken one of the BIOS screen but I just wasn't ready for it myself.

Let it be known that the screenshots were NOT taken in full screen mode just so I could show the Windows 95 install running in a window on my KDE desktop. If you don't believe me, check out any of the following URLs which inspired me to check VMWARE out for myself: http://www.vmware.com/news/pressarticles.html  Cool, huh?

LOGOUT:

After playing with VMWARE for a night I decided that it was time to upgrade the RAM in my desktop computer. I went to my local OfficeMax and picked up some SIMMs that I thought would work. They worked standalone but I couldn't get my machine to recognize all of the RAM... so I took it back to the store and got some DIMMs since my machine can do either or. My darn machine wouldn't see more than a single DIMM at a time and I was getting pissed. Hopefully I'll have it figured out by the next column and give a better rundown of VMWARE. Feel free to download your own copy of the Beta version (which I found no problems in) for free and send me some rants about it and I'll put them in the next column.

Thanks for reading....

Scott Dowdle

 

 

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