[NBLUG/talk] VMware Linux guest recommendations

[Kyle Rankin]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 04:42:18PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> Cameron Tully-Smith wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I'm looking for a Linux distribution that will run fast in VMware; I don't
> > need everything installed, looking mostly for Java development ala Eclipse
> > and PostgreSQL.
> > 
> > Any preferences?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Cameron
> 
> Hmmm .... perhaps a distro that optimizes the binaries for the hardware? 
>   e.g.:
> 
> * Arch Linux - optimizes binaries for i686
> * Gentoo - allows you to tweak the compilation/optimization of binaries 
> to your heart's content
> * Debian (64-bit only) - produces optimized binaries for amd64 or ia64 
> (but if you're running on x86, then stay away:  it's packages are only 
> i386 optimized)
> 
> Not sure exactly how much of a speed boost you'll get from optimizations 
> like this, but I guess it'd help some.
> 
> Probably just as importantly, though, you should make sure:
> 
> 1) that you've got a good bit of memory in the box, and
> 2) that you've enabled as few memory-hogging background process and 
> daemons as possible
> 
> HTH,
> 
> DR
> 

Binary optimizations don't provide much of a benefit even on actual
hardware and I wouldn't imagine it would be any better when the hardware is
virtualized. However, if your host is 64bit you might get some extra
performance if you spin up a 64bit virtual machine.

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org