Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Using Virtualbox OSE to test distributions

The speed at which I can evaluate and test out distributions has been greatly improved since I started using Virtualbox OSE. On one hand, you do not get quite the performance you get with a native implementation, but you do not have to either burn a CD, DVD, or USB stick to install, or go through the additional steps to boot an ISO image directly from the disk, so you can very quickly get at least an initial impression of a distribution just by running them in a Virtualbox OSE implementation.

Some of them work better than others. I can, for instance, get a true full screen implementation of sidux when I run it in a Virtualbox OSE instance, and the performance of sidux also is quite a bit better than many of the other distributions, one of the best that I have experienced since I started using Virtualbox OSE, in fact.

That is not a great surprise to me, since sidux always works well for me anyway, but what did surprise me is that at times I have seen a fresh sidux instance start up on initial boot faster than the smaller, lighter antiX that I also regard so highly. I have not quite figured out why that is, except to say that however sidux is set up, it is near optimal for use with Virtualbox OSE.

No comments: