Can Anyone Get Any Ver. Of Linux To Work?

Is there anyone that can get any version of Linux to work completely after the standard install? That is, sound, network, full video res, and usb2?

 

That depends on what you mean, linux as host or guest?

don

 

As a GUEST.

 

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Until there is such a thing as Parallels tools for Linux, then nobody stands any chance of doing it.
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on Mac OS

PD >>File Menu >> New

radio button
Typical or Custom

OS Type Linux and others

OS Version

drop down menu has 9 flavours of Linux

please please don't post guesses on the forums
or am I in the wrong forum?

Hugh W

 

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Hugh,

Please explain how to get full video res working in a Linux guest os. Also, since you know everything, please explain how to get full usb 2.0 pass through support to work.
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Network definitely works out of the box under Fedora Core 6, CentOS 4, and Ubuntu Edgy. I haven't tried graphics, sound, or USB2. When I (rarely) want to use graphics on a Linux VM, I just use networked X11 like on any remote Unix machine. Same effect as Coherence with Windows, but less kludgy. (No dragging bits of desktop along with you, etc. X11 was actually designed for remote display of individual windows.) Steps:

1) start X11.app
2) export DISPLAY=:0
3) ssh -XY your-linux-vm
4) run X11 applications

If you prefer full-screen, looks like you can do that from X11.app's preferences. You can put the DISPLAY in your .bash_profile to do it automatically, and the equivalent of -XY in your ~/.ssh/options.

 

The one thing that I know doesn't work well is time. The Linux machine will drift badly (there are kernel tunables that might help a bit but won't really solve it), and it won't do well with being put to sleep (either by pausing the guest or by putting the whole host to sleep). I'm waiting for Parallels Tools for Linux to fix that.

 

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We need to be mindfull that Hugh Watkins saw an oportunity to vent a vindictive desire, and didn't give full thought to the question that was actually being asked.
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After reading all the replies I still have to post the question again:

Using Vista as a host does anyone know of any distro of linux that can be installed as a guest OS on the latest parallels that will give me USB2, Network, and full video res abilities on a standard install?

 

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There is none.
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Solution: Remove vist and install mepis 6.5 as host, then install any windows os you like,usb will be available in the guest os.

don

 

No Linux Support on Vista HOst OS?

I am glad I found this thread, as it may save me going through all teh Linux distributions in the world.

In trying to run any linux at all, I have tried Fedora 6, which loads and 'works' except that networking will not work at all - the driver is correct according to the docs, the 'hardware' is installed correctly, but the device won;t initialize and get an IP address or work with a hard coded IP, so, that's no good at all. 3 emails to Parallels support later on this, and... oh yeah, they haven't replied at all... I think now I will have to ask every day until someone gives in an answers ;-)

So, I tried slackware, which is a bit more raw and so you would think might make it a bit easier to tweak things. However, that installs but when it boots it crashes trying to load a video driver and that's the end of that (I will try next just telling it to forget all that X windows rubbish and just give me telnet if it can). Also it might be something to do with some option it asked me about video buffers that I did not think of at the time, but perhaps I should have said no to ;-).

I was going to start looking at other distributions, but others here seem to think that it isn't possible to load Linux as a guest OS for Windows (Vista at least), which rather makes the claim that 'Vista is fully supported", somewhat, err, falactious. I can't believe this is really the case and there must be some tricks to this that so far escape me and others.

However so far, it seems that my experience with Parallels on Mac OSX, which was really good, is not going to be repeated for the Windows/Linux version. So far, I seem to have wasted my money and a lot of time trying to get this to go.

I shall be very pleased to see the conjecture that Linux cannot be loaded on Vista with Parallels contradicted, and that all you have to do is "xxxxx".

Anyone? ;-)

Jim

 

Time drifting is a well-known problem in any VM, not only in Parallels. The solution is easy: use the "clocksource=pit" kernel boot option, supplemented by running ntpd and/or ntpdate with some nearby timeservers. I'm typing this in Kubuntu Feisty running in a Parallels VM under Parallels Workstation for Linux, itself running in Debian Sid: the two clocks run absolutely in tandem, no drifting here...

 

"clocksource=pit" is one of the kernel tunables I was referring to as only marginally effective.

You probably are leaving your machine running for long times without sleeping, with little contention for the host processors. That's the ideal environment for ntpd. (I have a Xen system like that, and ntp with independent wallclock works well there.)

Consider the other extreme - if the difference between the guest's machine and the NTP server's is above some critical threshold (10 minutes? several hours? don't remember), it will refuse to do anything until you manually adjust the clock. (This is a security precaution.)

In the middle, NTP will just do a poor job. Its calculations are based on the expectation that the drift rate is predictable, which is not true if interrupt rates vary wildly (guest is often starved for host CPU time) or if the NTP servers' time suddenly jumps into the future (whole host goes to sleep, or just the guest suspended through the VM without notification).

The reason time works well under Parallels with a Windows guest and VMware with a Linux guest, is Parallels Tools for Windows and VMware Tools for Linux, respectively. That's the only real solution.