[SATLUG] Questions about virtualization

[Al Castanoli]

On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 11:36 -0500, nate wrote:
> Over the last year or so I have been trying to transition from being a 
> graphic designer in the print industry to becoming a full time web 
> designer/developer. I would really like to leave OSX behind in favor of 
> SuSE, but there are a couple of apps keeping me from making the 
> transition permanent, namely Photoshop and Flash. Every other app I use 
> has a linux equivalent, but there is no _viable_ replacement for 
> Photoshop, and there is nothing that can replace Flash.

Then again, speaking of virtualization, you could always run OS X as a
guest OS on a SuSE host.  See
http://afcasta.home.texas.net/VirtualMac.png
to see how this might work.  I've given my OS X vmware guest 1GB of RAM,
and it's working fine for the things I do, but I'm not into Photoshop,
Flash, or other such memory intensive applications.  It does fine with
hypercard and MacPerl, though.

> My question is how reliable/stable are the various virtualization 
> schemes (VMWare, Xen, etc.) for running these kinds of apps in Windows 
> on Linux? Is it super slow? Right now I am using a Mac Mini (intel) that 
> is running the CS suite with Rosetta. At times it is painful, but it 
> does work.

Thus, the reason for this reply - if you're really twisted, you could
run your CS suite with Rosetta on an OS X guest host.

> I want to buy a laptop for doing my work on and I would really like to 
> avoid buying a Yonah-based MacBook when i can find a Toshiba Merom-based 
> 17" laptop for the same price. Does anybody have any experience running 
> Photoshop with VMWare? Thanks in advance.

None.  All my digital pictures were taken on film, and the prints were
then scanned in using Sane.

Al Castanoli
Computers save time like kudzu prevents soil erosion.