<div dir="ltr">Hey Onno,<div><br></div><div>Just confirming Steve's comment.</div><div><br></div><div>I've been running Linux (currently Ubuntu 16.10) as primary OS forever and much of this time been using VMware Workstation to run all sorts of guest OSes for work purposes (Windows, Solaris x86, other Linux distros etc...).</div><div><br></div><div>I sometimes regret this but it's mainly due to:</div><div><ul><li>constant problems with suspend / resume (this is a desktop but it's the bane of my linux experience, about the only thing that ever worked reliably was my Thinkpad 240X back in 1999)</li><li>regular problems with graphics drivers - usually this is OK if I don't update things but I like to stay up-to-date with releases.</li><li>when updating to a new release finding that VMware Workstation no longer works because the kernel modules don't compile. Usually this sort of things gets sorted out by the community pretty quickly, but now I upgrade a non-primary system first and try things out there before my main desktop.</li></ul><div>My main system has 64GB of RAM too but I noticed some really weird extended pauses/lockups due to transparent hugepage support and running VM instances. I'm not sure if that's fixed in the latest kernels with ubuntu but it was a massive PITA to work it out and how to fix it (disable this feature basically).</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 1:59 PM, Onno Benschop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:onno@itmaze.com.au" target="_blank">onno@itmaze.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hi Steve, thank you for your thoughts. How would I run VMware in this scenario?</div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 27 February 2017 at 13:54, steve boak <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sboak@westnet.com.au" target="_blank">sboak@westnet.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<p>Hi Onno</p>
<p>I think Linux has changed a bit since your early experiences :-)</p>
<p>I've been running Debian on everything from a Raspberry Pi to
several different desktop systems for years and can't remember the
last time I had stability issues. There were some early glitches
with skylake on my current Asrock B150M Pro4 motherboard, but that
was only to do with slow booting and after a firmware update they
have 'gone away' now.</p>
<p>I'd recommend you give Linux a go on new hardware, especially if
you can get your hands on a system to do a test run for a while.</p>
<p>I'm sure others will have recommendations of laptop / desktop
hardware that is proven to work.<br>
</p>
<p>Steve<br>
</p><div><div class="m_7724899471277644765h5">
<br>
<div class="m_7724899471277644765m_-5290370620784432627moz-cite-prefix">On 27/02/17 13:31, Onno Benschop wrote:<br>
</div>
</div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="m_7724899471277644765h5">
<div dir="ltr">As a Linux user for many years - debian potato
anyone? I've had my fair share of "fun" in relation to making a
stable environment. In 2009 after too many crashes I bit the
bullet and virtualised my Linux experience. I bought a 17"
MacBook Pro, installed VMware Fusion on it and ran my Linux
desktop inside VMware. I still do. Best business decision I ever
made.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Based on that track record, I'm reluctant to depreciate my
use of VMware on a Mac, but my last 8 months have been less
than optimal. I purchased a late 2015 27" Retina iMac and
loaded it up with 64Gb of RAM. It's currently running El
Capitain.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It crashes an awful lot. OWC have swapped out the RAM and
tell me that there is nothing wrong. Apple told me that they
don't support 64Gb of RAM, OWC says othewise. VMware tells me
that the microcode on the SkyLake processor is out of date,
Intel agrees and Apple waves its hands in the air in the hope
I won't notice that they're not actually doing anything.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm loathe to run Windows as my Host OS, and it's unclear
if the boot process would load a microcode update for the
processor, so I could actually see if that made a difference.
Similarly, I'm not keen to go to a Linux Host, since prior to
2009, that resulted in countless days and weeks of downtime
when <insert random hardware> stopped being supported or
wasn't quite compatible with my hardware and again I'm not
sure I'll get a boot-level microcode update via that
mechanism.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm at a loss what to do next and I'm looking for
suggestions.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Functionality I use daily:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Linux as my Desktop</li>
<li>VMware snapshots to test new software / test updates</li>
<li>VMware machines for different clients</li>
</ul>
<div>I'm seriously contemplating selling my near new iMac and
starting again, but I'm not at all sure what that might look
like. I have work to do and my current set-up just isn't
helping.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Is there something I should investigate, some aspect of
what I'm doing that is in need of review?<br>
<br>
From a troubleshooting perspective, I've swapped out RAM
until I was blue in the face. So far I can make Memtest86
pass if I turn off all but one CPU core. I can reliably make
my machine crash by running OSX Photos and exporting a 1080p
slideshow and VMware randomly crashes with spurious errors -
sometimes killing VMware, sometimes the login session,
sometimes the kernel.</div>
-- <br>
<div class="m_7724899471277644765m_-5290370620784432627gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">Onno Benschop<br>
<br>
()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno..<br>
|>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno..<br>
--- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno..<br>
<br>
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"What computer should I buy?" </span><a href="http://goo.gl/spsb66" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/spsb66</a>
<div><br>
ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888
- <a href="mailto:onno@itmaze.com.au" target="_blank">onno@itmaze.com.au</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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<br>
</div></div><pre>______________________________<wbr>_________________
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</font></span></blockquote><span class="m_7724899471277644765HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<br>
<pre class="m_7724899471277644765m_-5290370620784432627moz-signature" cols="72">--
Steve Boak, VK6HSB, <a href="tel:0411%20255%20789" value="+61411255789" target="_blank">0411 255 789</a>, P.O. Box 240, Nannup, WA 6275</pre>
</font></span></div>
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PLUG discussion list: <a href="mailto:plug@plug.org.au" target="_blank">plug@plug.org.au</a><br>
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PLUG Membership: <a href="http://www.plug.org.au/membership" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.plug.org.au/members<wbr>hip</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="m_7724899471277644765gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Onno Benschop<br><br>()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno..<br>|>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno..<br>--- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno..<br><br><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">If you need to know: "What computer should I buy?" </span><a href="http://goo.gl/spsb66" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/spsb66</a><div><br>ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - <a href="mailto:onno@itmaze.com.au" target="_blank">onno@itmaze.com.au</a></div></div></div>
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PLUG discussion list: <a href="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</a><br>
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PLUG Membership: <a href="http://www.plug.org.au/membership" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.plug.org.au/<wbr>membership</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Jason Nicholls<br><a href="mailto:jason@mindsocket.com.au" target="_blank">jason@mindsocket.com.au</a><br>0430 314 857<br></div>
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