[Mesa3d-users] 3D Graphics - and Virtualization

[Alexey E. <al...@gm...>]

hi all !

Probably all of you have heard about Virtualization/Emulation
software, such as VMware, Xen, VirtualPC, Qemu, KVM and others...  For
those who don't know what it is: Virtualization is a way to run one
operating system on top of another.

Probably all know that most Virtualizers support only 2D graphics for
their guest operating systems. It turned out to be very difficult to
do virtualization of 3D graphics, in particular because the people
that write virtualization software often don't understand 3D graphics.

However, I wanted inform you, that a new Open-Source x86 Virtualizer
emerged recently, trying to provide for a 3D graphics OpenGL
virtualization. The product's name is: VirtualBox.
VirtualBox is developed by a commercial company, and has a good
support of both Windows and Linux, plus it has exception speed. I see
it as a competitor to VMware.

While Windows and Linux are officially supported, no-one is preventing
you from adding some other OSes to "supported" list as well. (BSD and
Solaris) - that's the power of OSS.

VirtualBox home page:
www.virtualbox.org

Article about Using VirtualBox on openSUSE Linux.
http://forgeftp.novell.com/lfl/.html/virtualbox.html

More info about 3D virtualization can be found on:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=16
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/475

I know that Mesa3D guys know 3D graphics perfectly, and so I wanted
you to participate in discussions about 3D graphics virtualization.
After all, my hope is that one day, the Open-Source community will be
able to run 3D software on a Virtual Machine (VM).

If you want, you're welcome to contribute to VirtualBox project as well.

Use cases:
1. Run Linux with compiz 3D desktop on Windows.
2. Run Windows games on Linux.
3. [you add here]

So, are there any people interested in OSS 3D graphics virtualization ?

-- 
-Alexey Eremenko "Technologov"