Re: [Qemu-devel] VMWare player

[Jim C. Brown]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 12:29:45PM -0700, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> I doubt this is targeted at QEMU,

I agree. It seems it can do 3 things that qemu currently can't: Use certain
types of host hardware (such as DVD or USB), copy & paste between host and
guest, and support drag & drop. None of these is a major issue (and copy and
paste over qemu machines which are networked is possible).

On the other hand, qemu supports using multiple snapshots, networking virtual
machines together, and its user-net/slirp network support is better than
the host only support that VMware Player has. (qemu also have a primitive
video capture ability via the monitor 'snapshot' command, which captures
video stills of the guest into png files.)

> but rather at competing with Microsoft
> and VirtualPC. That or they are leaving the low-end market for server
> consolidation.

Personally, I'd say that the latter is more likely. VMware gets most of the
big bucks from businesses which want to run hundreds of virtual machines.

> 
> This may in fact be as much VMware as most people would need. Countdown
> has started for the first person to create a system image solely from
> freeware "VMware Player" ;-)

Based on the comparison sheet they give, I doubt it is possible. VMware Player
isn't able to create virtual machines. Of course, if you can save changes to
the virtual disk and boot from something other than the hard disk, it might
be possible to use qemu-img to get around this.

-- 
Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty.
Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.