Using VMware Workstation; Time to Try VirtualBox?

A year earlier, I had tried using VirtualBox in place of VMWare Workstation as a virtualization solution.  I wondered whether I should try it again now.

I ran a search for recent comments and reviews.  A number of people had good things to say about VirtualBox.  It sounded like it had been progressing well in the year or so since Oracle bought it.  Rob Williams at Techgage listed some pros and cons.  A month after my previous try, an InfoWorld review said that VirtualBox had been gaining ground really quickly.  More recently, just a few months before this post, ZDNet's Jason Perlow did a comparison of VirtualBox 3.2 and Workstation 7.1.  Perlow said this:

In virtually all of our tests, [Workstation] matched or exceeded the performance of Oracle VM VirtualBox. Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit performance was extremely snappy, and close enough to native that when we were running it in full screen mode, we couldn’t perceive the difference between “On the metal” and virtualized on our test system.

That reminded me that, once again, I was looking at a "professional" review by someone who comes in, tries the software on a fresh system, does their benchmarks, and then closes the doors and turns out the lights -- not sticking around for a few months, that is, to see how the thing holds up in everyday usage and abusage.  Perlow admitted that VirtualBox, not VMware, was his workaday tool.  But for me, by contrast, VMware Workstation 7.1 was huffing and puffing, and it had never approached the performance of a native Windows XP installation.  (Perlow also noted that VirtualBox performed well in his tests, but failed miserably when using Windows rather than Linux as the host.  I was not concerned about that; I would be using Ubuntu Linux as my host.)

These sources reminded me of the issues that had become par for the course in my use of VMware Workstation.  There were quite a few, as readers of my many posts on VMware would know.  One, as just noted, was the slowness.  There were things I couldn't do in VMware, like video editing, because of the poor performance.  Another kind of problem was hardware-related.  While I had worked through many of those issues, as noted in previous posts, there were always others.  VMware would recognize only some USB devices, including my multifunction printer/scanner, and/or would recognize them imperfectly (i.e., permitting only some functionality).  VMware would slow to a crawl if I tried to get it to use multiple processors.  It had originally seemed to handle at least a couple of open VMs at the same time, but more recently would become unusably slow if I had more than one VM open.


On the other hand, I knew that a switch to a new virtualization platform would require some downtime and many hours of tinkering, as well as some lost work in the process of making mistakes and learning how it worked.  I was also curious about what was going to happen with VirtualBox.  When Oracle bought Sun in 2009, some were predicting that this was awful news for open-source projects like VirtualBox.  It may be.  But Oracle has recently come out with a relatively significant new release of VirtualBox.  Before making the leap, I would like to let more time pass, so as to see whether the naysayers are wrong or whether, instead, Oracle was just cleaning out the closet, putting the last of its in-process improvements into production before marking the VirtualBox product for shelving or sale to some other tech company.

A quick check also suggested that transitioning from VMware to VirtualBox would probably entail creation of new VMs from scratch.  While there are surely countervailing opinions, what I got from the first few hits of a search on the matter leaned toward "the Fat Bloke's First Rule of VM Migration," which he stated as follows:  "Don't, if you can help it. If you can create a new vm from scratch on the new virtualization platform, you probably should."  Wand Weaver likewise said that graphics issues made it "tricky to import existing VMWare machines into VirtualBox."

I had other fish to fry.  I was in no rush to get myself into a new mess, dealing with creation of new VMs for VirtualBox at this point.  It seemed to met that the better strategy was to watch and wait, to see whether VirtualBox (or possibly some other virtualization program) would become the champ or would instead fade away.  This seemed especially advisable since a recent effort to free up some space and relocate the paging file in one of my WinXP VMs seemed to have improved performance.  So before dabbling with VirtualBox again, I decided to see what I could do to improve VMware's performance.

2008 Presidential Campaign Progress Report

1. The crucial event of the campaign, so far, was Obama's serious blunder in choosing Biden rather than Clinton as his VP. This gave McCain an opportunity he has capitalized on very well. Sarah Palin has given Republicans something to cheer about. 2. Obama's campaign lost its momentum as soon as McCain announced Palin as his running mate. But it had a serious problem even before that. The Democrats should have been polling very far ahead of the Republicans. They weren't. Somehow, they were failing to connect. McCain seems to be adept at sensing that and responding to it. 3. Without momentum, Obama suddenly ceased to look godlike. The Olympian stage set at the convention became a joke. I think Obama chose Biden because he assumed he was going to win, and he wanted the ideal candidate for governing. This is a plan for a superior administration. It is better than what I expect from McCain, which is that he will use Palin to win votes and appeal to people but will ignore her views on issues. But when Biden generated a yawn and the aura of invincibility faded, even some Obama supporters became concerned about his Jimmy Carter-like earnestness. His tremendous calmness suddenly began to look like weakness. Nothing succeeds like success, and suddenly Obama's campaign lost that prop. 4. Obama is losing because of the experience argument. Having Biden on the ticket just underscores the upside-down fact that the sage hand -- be it Biden, Clinton, or anyone else -- is playing second fiddle to someone who has little major-league leadership experience. I, myself, am not convinced that Obama would be a superior leader, though I do think he would be a visionary and intelligent chooser of wise policies. Palin is right: she does have more executive experience than Obama. It shows in their bearing. He is great at speeches, but he remains boyish, in a way that does not inspire confidence. 5. McCain appears to be turning talk about the economy, his weak point, into talk about oil drilling, where he has an advantage among voters who seek a simplistic solution. In this sense, Obama is playing with one hand tied behind his back, and he is almost strong enough to do it. Almost. But through the pollsters, the American people are telling him that, in politics, bullshit can grow legs and walk upon the earth. Nobody cares if McCain is grossly distorting things left and right. We already learned this from Reagan. What matters, it seems, is that McCain can keep it coming. You cannot debunk nonsense as quickly as the other side can churn it out. McCain could conceivably go too far, to the point of becoming a laughingstock. But the American people have a demonstrated tolerance for very high levels of nonsense. 6. Obama has tried, but has not been entirely able, to create a sense that he is running a class act, a campaign based upon the kinds of principles that America needs. He seems sincere in that effort, and it does resonate with many people. But as McCain's campaign keeps the punches coming, Obama seems to be getting dragged down to McCain's level. It is a common experience: someone wants to play fair, but then gets punished by an unfair blow, and suddenly it becomes important to just stay alive. Nobody can be perfect, and to the extent Obama espouses a principled approach that he, himself, cannot deliver to the satisfaction of all observers, he risks seeming pretentious and phony. National emergencies and international crises -- hurricanes, Russian invasions of Georgia, and the like -- seem to burnish McCain's standing. Just as in Russia, such events remind voters that they want a strong hand at the tiller, even if it happens to be a dangerous one. McCain is no more invincible than Obama. He seems especially vulnerable in the upcoming debates; he could come away from them looking very bad. But if McCain can survive the debates, he seems likely otherwise to deny Obama a chance to connect with voters on the level of thoughtful, long-term planning for the nation's best interests. At present, it seems that the debates offer Obama a last opportunity to avoid losing in November.

Speculation on Mass Relocation in the U.S.

This is another speculative piece. I haven't researched it. It's based on general reading. It may be entirely mistaken. The purpose of posting it is to advance thinking on the subject, for me and for anyone else who may read it. * * * * * Water is becoming increasingly scarce in large sections of the country. There are no immediately obvious signs that this trend will reverse in the foreseeable future. Desalination of ocean water could make a substantial difference at some point, but I understand that process is energy-intensive, the plants have not yet begun to be constructed, it is not clear how much that water would cost or how much would be available, and generally that solution is years away. The U.S. population continues to grow, from births and from immigration. Much of that growth occurs in places like Los Angeles. The present impression is that, at some point, water supply will fall short of water demand. There will be some hardships. Those will tend to fall especially on those who cannot arrange filtration, bottling, or other sources of water. Hurricane Katrina seemed to say that poor people will stay where they are, to some large extent, even if doing so will cost them their lives. It is not likely that the entire populations of L.A. slums, barrios, and ghettos will pack up and leave town. But for some lower-income families, greener parts of the country will seem very, very appealing, just as they do for a Chinese friend who views this greenery with eyes that have seen large quantities of barrenness and environmental degradation in her home country. L.A. generally is said to be due for a substantial correction in real estate prices. It is not clear what will happen to those who then find themselves upside down, financially speaking. Some of them will become renters and, as such, will be more mobile. Given the growing odds of a recession, it is not clear whether, or when, large numbers of these people will once again be buying real estate in southern California. They, too -- these members of the middle class -- may find themselves going elsewhere. In short, these forces -- water shortage, real estate price correction, recession -- may augur some migration of lower- and middle-income workers away from previous high-growth places like southern California (along with other western cities, e.g., Phoenix, Las Vegas). It appears possible, then, that other cities will import some of the problems that places like L.A. have experienced in recent years. Cities to the north and east may increasingly experience a different and more shocking kind of crime, for example, and a corresponding increase in police brutality. Population pressures already exist in those other places: many already have their own water concerns, for example, and many will be struggling to find jobs for the people who are already there. A large migration is possible, though of course not certain; and if it did occur, one could expect some locals to put up legal and informal barriers against out-of-towners. As an example of an informal barrier, some communities (in e.g., the Midwest) could witness a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, based upon fear of a perceived threat posed by incoming black or Hispanic people. There was something of an exodus from southern California in the 1980s, based (if memory serves) upon a reversal in the housing market. In that instance, it seemed that transplants went especially to the Pacific Northwest and to Denver, though they also populated previously remote patches in places like Idaho and Montana. That exodus may predict, to some extent, what would happen this time around. But prices are not as low (in some of those northern locations) and water supplies are not as reliable (in e.g., Denver) as they were a quarter-century ago. Sooner or later, if trends continue, water (and perhaps financial) pressures may scoot people along, either to the Northwest or to the Midwest. People who have been burned by real estate investments, and who perhaps bear the scars on their credit ratings, may not be in a position to bid up real estate to its former levels for quite some time. Even if they were so inclined, they may lack the means. In the present time of tightening credit, it appears that it will be many years before lenders return to their previous liberal attitude toward supplying mortgages. Again, water is an issue, and as I commented previously, so is the ability of municipalities to keep the basic services coming. So it appears that there may be more demand for rental property than for ownership, for some time. That demand may be increased if people become more concerned about retaining mobility -- about not being financially trapped again in, say, a house in San Diego or a condo in Tucson. The concept of home ownership could thus, conceivably, be entering a period of long-term revision. Depending on how things shake out, it could be decades before the general public re-embraces the notion that it is normal, natural, sensible, and affordable to buy a house. That notion is still very much rooted in our culture, and it would take a lot to shake it; but the forces in motion now are so monumental as to pose that kind of possibility. You really cannot have the American Dream without water. And if that notion does get shaken, then some fundamental assumptions about life in the U.S. will be in flux. Do I expect this? Eventually, yes, of course, in some form. India is a case study in how far population growth can go, and how far the people of a nation can go in endorsing extremes of wealth and poverty. The U.S. is not India, obviously. But it presently appears that extremes of wealth are accepted in the United States, and that they are influential in manipulating the government and the media, and generally in creating conditions for their own expansion. We will have substantially more people in the future, and we will keep on having them. We will have them at an accelerating rate, I would expect, if the affordabilty of a good education becomes increasingly problematic for the people who live here -- if, that is, education in the future serves less of its traditional role in mitigating birth rates. There is just not enough water. (And, eventually, there will not be enough affordable food, for all these people. If we are able to convert food to fuel while people in Africa are starving, eventually we will be able to do something of that nature while people in the U.S. are starving -- as, indeed, some already are). It will surely not all turn out precisely this way. This has been a merely speculative piece. Its gist is that there are forces at work, pertaining to the economy and also to resources like water, that seem likely to encourage migration of large numbers of people away from some cities toward others; and that if such migrations do occur, they will have their own consequences on such things as attitudes toward race (in some places, at least) and on the sort of dwelling that a sensible person will be inclined to seek.