Monthly Archives: November 2008

gentoo

On virtualization…

Well, I quit using VirtualBox for my virtualization needs. I am now using kernel based virtualization, or kvm. Kvm offers many advantages, in my opinion, the key being the simplicity and ease of use. I did not like the VBox abstraction.

  • kvm’s core code is *in* the kernel, userspace tools are in a package. Kvm is part of Linux and uses the regular Linux scheduler and memory management. This means that kvm is much smaller and simpler to use. [1]
  • kvm is Free Software released under the GPL.
  • kvm uses processor extensions (HVM) for virtualization.
  • kvm supports 64bit guests out of the box.

Also, kvm is a breeze to setup. In a nutshell, create the img. kvm-img create gentoo-amd64.img 10G then boot the gentoo live cd. kvm -hda gentoo-amd64.img -cdrom /path/to/iso -boot d. Then follow the gentoo install handbook. Simple.

Lastly, kvm images are easily transportable and will run on other hosts (within reason, can’t run a 64bit guest on a 32bit host, etc). As a matter of fact, I present to a amd64 guest if you would like to use it*, here. Unpack it, and it will decompress to 15-16G (sparse files). Then you can start it by simply running kvm /path/to/img. In that guest you will find a pretty recent stage 3 install and emerge -e world done. There are a few other essential apps on there (vim & dhcpcd). From there, you can emerge xorg-x11, a DE, do whatever you want, really. I am using that guest to test out xfce development efforts and to be sure that we can bring you guys xfce-4.6 asap, once it is ready :) Cheers, and have fun playing with kvm!

*I do not wish to support this in ANY way, shape, or form. Use it how you wish, but do not expect help with it. Sorry.
gentoo

Gentoo: Best Webcam?

Dear lazyweb,

In your experiences, what has been the best webcam to use with Gentoo? I would like to use skype or some other video messaging app to talk to my girlfriend studying abroad next semester but I haven’t used (or setup) a webcam before. Thanks all.

gentoo

Gentoo: USE=kerberos removed from the default profiles

Hi,

News item: The kerberos USE flag has been removed from the default desktop profiles. If you relied on this use flag (unlikely) then you should add it to make.conf again. There was discussion about this flag and its validity when the e2fsprogs-libs upgrade was happening on the stable tree. Anyway, it is now removed.
Read more here.