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As somebody that has used OpenVZ, VMware (several flavors, since the early beta days), QEMU, Bochs, Linux-VServer, and others, I like OpenVZ (and VMware Server but for totally different reasons). I looked at Xen and decided that I would grow old setting it up, so I abandoned that effort, for now.

OpenVZ is easy to setup (once you get the kernel and packages setup, which is a breeze in Debian 3.1 and 4.0). It runs ridiculously fast, it consumes little memory, and takes little disk space (which can be further enhanced using hard links). Besides that, everything is fully scriptable. I also only have to maintain a single kernel (on the host).

By reducing isolation (jails/containers vs. virtualization), the host machine can directly copy files into and out of guests, but the guests can't directly see each other (you can through ssh, for instance).

I also like the fact that on the host machine, using ps -ef (or ps aux) gives you information on ALL processes, whether host or guest. The tty column shows you which machine owns a process.

Since it's a shared kernel and uses shared memory, resource utilization is superior. If a guest isn't doing anything, it really isn't doing anything at all, unlike the virtualizers (except the up-and-coming KVM). The virtualized machines, for instance, keep running the "do nothing loop" when the OS is idle. (I believe that VMware Tools is supposed to help a bit in this regard). And, if processes aren't running or disk space isn't being used, then, unlike VMware, resources aren't being consumed.

This is basically a way to run multiple guest Linuxes under a host, not a full virtualization environment, so there are trade-offs. I think that for running multiple Linux servers (as opposed to desktop apps), OpenVZ/Virtuozzo is an ideal solution.

Since I'm running a smallish server at home, I've found that OpenVZ is the best way to run so many Linux guests at once.

I will have to say that I have not tried UML because of performance. I can't try KVM since I don't have the correct AMD processors.

I was also initially impressed by Linux-VServer but got stuck, somewhere, but I cannot remember where. I found that OpenVZ seemed to be easier and more powerful than Linux-VServer, its virtualization cousin.

Here's a decent comparison of the kinds of VM's available for Linux:
    http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-linuxvirt/?ca=dgr-lnxw01Virtual-Linux

I really like OpenVZ and will be glad to put in a plug for it. Try howtoforge.com for some great help on setting up....

I've installed the Open Source version and am using it for my family email. It works great. The web interface is really impressive but I also have some family members connecting Thunderbird to it and it works without a hitch. Set up was a breeze. I used a HowToForge guide and it worked great. As for maintaining, the forums have been extremely useful. Overall I'm very pleased.

If you want to run IE, you need to pay Microsoft for Windows. Even if you want to run IE on another operating system somehow, you must still pay for the Windows license to use IE. If you need IE to access certain sites, you must pay Microsoft for the privilege.

Hmmm... that's just a load of bull.

3 Months ago I installed Ubuntu.. in a virgin installation I could do nothing. After searching for and installing Automatix, I could do stuff.

2 days ago I replaced that Ununtu desktop with Fedora 6... in a virgin installation I could do nothing. After searching for and finding the excellent HowoToForge doc on spiffing up Fedora,:
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_fedo ra_core6

I could do everything I wanted with just slightly more effort. (My reasons for switching has nothing to do with not liking Ubuntu. Its just that my hard drive crashed and I wanted to try Fedora 6 upon re-installing a new desktop).

Out of the box, both Distros offer the same capabilities, and lack of proprietary drivers, codecs, etc. The user has to do it for themselves by going to third part websites for these.

AutoCad probably runs under WINE if you try on a spare machine. Otherwise, things have come quite far with virtualization. VMware is just one of many options which can host legacy operating systems like Windows inside a virtual machine.

However, a lot of people don't have family or friends who are familiar or comfortable enough with Linux to be able to solve these problems

They do if they are changing to Linux. If they are "ordinary users" they'll use what they can get support for from their friends. It's not like Windows can be operated without regular maintenance by a fairly technical admin. And one reasonably savvy Linux user can support a lot of Linux users. As I said, I have a lot more time to visit when I head over to my parents house now.

But how about "niche" apps such as Photoshop

Um, Adobe specifically made sure Photoshop would run well under WINE. I'll grant Flash authoring, but most people don't need to write it (especially not the parents of most Slashdot readers), just run it, and there are current workarounds and good future prospects for that.

In short, Linux just isn't ready to seriously compete with Windows and OS-X for the common user, mostly because of lack of application support...

Well, you start out talking about greeting card programs and wrap up with Photoshop and Flash editing. I think your definition of the "common user" is a bit... odd.

>>It took 3 minutes to get an apache 3.x series server with mod_perl up.

See, even an idiot can get Debian to work. :P

But seriously, with articles like The Perfect Setup and tons of community support, Debian is really coming into its own. I run it on my own site and have suggested and helped several people work it into their own operations.

BTW, an old laptop with Debian and wikimedia makes an awesome shared documentation server for a small office.

I imagine a world where Windows is banned and replaced with Ubuntu (for the sake of argument). Imagine your family installing and updating software from CLI or giving up your favorite software or games.

Already done for my parents. I had them on Firefox and Thunderbird anyway, and moving them to Ubuntu was pretty painless. A short breaking-in period, but mostly they've been happy and I enjoy actually spending time with them when I visit now instead of working on their computer. The main thing they noted was that Linux had cooler screensavers.

A bit more complicated moving my wife and kids over, it's true. (Windows is corrupting its own system partition; no SMART errors detected, but booting is hit or miss now. No problems in Linux on the same machine.) Web and email are pretty much there, except for the Flash/Shockwave games the kids play sometime. I used this howto which works but is still a bit slow. Hopefully the native Flash 9 in "early 2007" will be better in that regard. A lot of the Windows educational games don't work so hot in Wine, but I'm playing with Qemu and VMWare player. Besides, they do like many of the Linux games available, so it's not so bad as all that.

My wife isn't quite as happy moving from MS Word to OpenOffice Writer. I've got all the fonts moved over but things don't work quite the way she's used to, and little format changes happen when moving between MS and OO formats. Hopefully this will pass, but it is a bit of an annoyance for now.

Imagine relearning all they know about their desktop in a Linux environment.

That has not been a problem, actually. For anyone - my young kids, my elderly parents, my thirtysomething wife. Desktops are pretty much desktops, and everything has its own little interface nowadays - cell phones, DVD players, stereos, practically every single website, etc. Learning another slightly different interface isn't a big deal.

Windows also has a lot of software not offered on other platforms, such as Photoshop, Flash (the IDE), Dreamweaver, 3DSMax and so on.

My family doesn't use those. Neither do I, for that matter. I do programming, not web development. Perhaps if I were more of a web developer I'd see things your way.

• Codase
  
• Koders
  
• Planet Source Code
  

There are many good resources on the web. The standard resource is The Linux Documentation Project, or http://www.tldp.org/. Another site, which is much better than it used to be, is http://www.linux.com/. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ has many great articles to guide you through a wide variety of small projects. A great newer site with helpful articles is http://www.howtoforge.com/. For help on the desktop side, http://www.desktoplinux.com/ has many articles you may find of use. Documentation and information about KDE is, of course, available at http://www.kde.org/ and it's affiliated sites (linked from their homepage). IBM is always putting up new articles at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/ that can provide usefull information for development work under Linux. You may also find the articles on http://www.debian.org/, http://www.gentoo.org/, and http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ usefull even though the articles were written for other distros.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can always head over to irc.freenode.net. The #suse and #opensuse channels will be of particular interest to you. You may find #kde helpful for KDE applications. ##linux is basically a catch-all channel; we'll generally be able to field just about any question you throw at us there. If we can't, we will point you in the right direction.

Keeping up with the FOSS news can also teach you quite a bit. You already know about Slashdot. http://osnews.com/ is another very nice resource. http://www.kerneltrap.org/ is a less frequently updated site which can provide you with more advanced information. Keeping an eye on http://www.freshmeat.net/ can help you get a better feel for the various software available for Linux. And of course, with gmail you can setup alerts for Linux, KDE, etc.

If you really want to learn more about Linux, there's no better way than distro hopping. Go to http://www.vmware.com/ and download their free VMWare Server 1.0 to allow you to try out various distros without having to wipe your hard drive. This does, however, require you have a decent amount of RAM (I'd recommend at least 1 GB). Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ for a fairly complete list of the available Linux distros, sorted by popularity.

If all these links really don't solve your problems, take yourself over to your best local bookstore and buy a book or two. The drawback of doing this, however, is that most of them will be pretty much out of date by the time they hit the shelves. On the other hand, they will give you a great foundation upon which you can build (update yourself) easily by utilizing the online resources.

Also, never forget about http://www.google.com/linux!

while ubuntu does give you a cd with an automatic lamp install

it might be of interest how to do it manually.

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_ubuntu_6.0 6

        * Web Server: Apache 2.0
        * Database Server: MySQL 5.0
        * Mail Server: Postfix
        * DNS Server: BIND9
        * FTP Server: proftpd
        * POP3/IMAP: I will use Maildir format and therefore install Courier-POP3/Courier-IMAP.
        * Webalizer for web site statistics

one to book mark for later i think.

He's apparently not asking for compile farm...

Author did fail to say what the purpose was, but here are some good starts.

Apache cluster
MySQL cluster (should also refer to mysql.com resources)
Ultra monkey, heartbeat and the like can make cluster as well.

He's apparently not asking for compile farm...

Author did fail to say what the purpose was, but here are some good starts.

Apache cluster
MySQL cluster (should also refer to mysql.com resources)
Ultra monkey, heartbeat and the like can make cluster as well.

If I wanted to use Xen, I could run a distro w/ it installed or I could try patching my distro.

Excuse me? Do your research, dude. I've just installed a new AMD64 box, and installed Xen on it. No 'patching' of the distro required; just run the Xen kernel and install a few utilities. Dead simple. Check this tutorial, for instance:

    The perfect Xen setup on Debian/Ubuntu

Here is a good SuSE 10 howto. Just use the parts that you want.

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_suse_10.0

found a debian setup...