[GTALUG] Virtualized OSes

[ted leslie]

I am thinking of moving off Debian/Mint-DE, to Nixos linux for this type of
flexibility.

-tl

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Peter Platek <peterplatek at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Yeah, that (sadly) is a good use case.  But surely a proper package
> > management system would let you do this too.
> >
> > - allow more than one version of a package to be installed
> >
> > - allow more than one instance of the same package, but with different
> >   global configuration.  Perhaps global configuration is evil.
> >
> > - allow package dependencies to contol which versions of each package
> >   talk to each other.  For example, if A talks to B, under some
> >   conditions, old A should talk to old B
> >
> > - make sure that distinct package's configurations don't affect each
> >   other.  Example: two different packages that use Apache; they should
> not
> >   configure Apache in ways that conflict.
>
> I think Red Hat's software collections are supposed to do that:
>
> https://www.softwarecollections.org
>
> On 22 April 2015 at 17:24, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:
> >
> > | From: Giles Orr <gilesorr at gmail.com>
> >
> > | I've been using VirtualBox a lot recently, and I've been pretty
> > | impressed with it - running more than one simultaneous machine,
> > | setting up an internal network and running ansible between them,
> > | nifty.
> >
> > It is a neat trick.
> >
> > But what is it useful for?
> >
> > Clearly it is great to be able to run different OSes if you need to
> > run more than one.  For example, to be able to run MS Word when you
> > mostly want to run Linux.  Or to test on multiple platforms.
> >
> > In the Libreswan project, we use virtualization to test networking
> > software.  Since some of the code is in the OS, we at least sometimes
> have
> > to run different OSes.
> >
> > But most of virtualization seems to be for other purposes.
> >
> > |  Today at work we had an interesting discussion about Digital
> > | Ocean: the suggestion was made (and undoubtedly it's obvious to many
> > | on this list, but it was eye-opening to me, I'm still getting my head
> > | around disposable machines) that if you weren't sure an upgrade to a
> > | droplet would work, just clone it, do the upgrade on the clone and see
> > | how it goes.  Then you can make your decision and destroy the unwanted
> > | version.
> >
> > Yeah, that (sadly) is a good use case.  But surely a proper package
> > management system would let you do this too.
> >
> > - allow more than one version of a package to be installed
> >
> > - allow more than one instance of the same package, but with different
> >   global configuration.  Perhaps global configuration is evil.
> >
> > - allow package dependencies to contol which versions of each package
> >   talk to each other.  For example, if A talks to B, under some
> >   conditions, old A should talk to old B
> >
> > - make sure that distinct package's configurations don't affect each
> >   other.  Example: two different packages that use Apache; they should
> not
> >   configure Apache in ways that conflict.
> >
> > - job migration between machines, even while running, seems useful.
> >   (That's not a package management problem.)
> >
> > One step more towards virtualization:
> >
> > Jails are minimal and may be good enough but a lot cheaper than
> > supporting true virtual x86 machines.
> >
> > |  All of which made me think "wouldn't it be cool if I could
> > | have a system with an totally stripped Linux with VirtualBox as the
> > | "Window Manager" so I could toggle between two or three running OSes
> > | with graphical interfaces ..."  So:
> >
> > I think that Serious VMware products are stripped Linux systems that
> > can run VMs without a lot of extras.
> >
> > I think that Zen Dom0 (host) can be minimal too.
> >
> > So much of the noise this day is about things like Docker and CoreOS.
> > A lot feels like branding exercises rather than technology.  I find it
> > too hard to figure out what they actually are.
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