OT Re: Linux-on-Linux

[Geert Janssens]

Clinton MacDonald wrote:
> Mr. Hirschfeld et alia:
> 
> (Unfortunately, this post will not answer your question, and might be 
> considered off-topic for that reason.)
> 
> R. Hirschfeld wrote:
> 
>> There's been recent discussion about both Mac-on-Linux
>> and Linux-on-Mac, but how about Linux-on-Linux? [...]
> 
> 
> I have been trying to follow these discussions, but I must be missing 
> some essential piece of understanding on this topic. What does everyone 
> mean by "Mac-on-Linux," "Linux-on-Mac," and the like? Is this what is 
> realized in an emulator such as Virtual PC, in running an instance of 
> the Mac operating system in a window such as MOL in Yellow Dog Linux, or 
> in running a virtual machine like the Java engine?
> 
All three "Mac-on-Linux", "Linux-on-Mac" and "Linux-on-Linux" would use 
MOL as the emulation program.

> In any of those cases, why would one want to run "Linux-on-Linux"? Isn't 
> the booted instance of Linux good enough? What am I missing?
> 
Mac-on-Linux or Linux-on-Mac both have the obvious added value of having 
two operating systems on one machine, and thus you could use your 
favourite applications in both worlds.
Wether you choose Mac-on-Linux (which is a native linux installation as 
your main os, and MacOS inside MOL as guest OS) or Linux-on-Mac (which 
is a native MacOS installation as your main os, with Linux inside MOL as 
guest OS) would depend largely on which OS you use most.

To an average computer user, there is not much use for Linux-on-Linux. 
But there are several uses for it in advanced computing. Some examples:

- A linux native software developper is writing a rather complicated 
program, that potentially damages his system in the debugging stage. 
This programmer would certainly be interested in a isolated linux test 
environment. Linux running inside MOL on a Linux main system could 
provide this.

- A office having a speedy G5 server, to which several people log on. 
Suppose there is quite a lot of sensitive info on the computer, the 
office might be interested in having each person log into it's own 
virtual linux environment. This could be done by creating a separate 
installation and configuration of MOL for each person that can log in. 
Although there is only one computer physically, each person logged in 
seems to have his own personal computer.

- A school teaching linux. Each class needs to have the same startup 
setup over and over again. Create a master image for MOL's virtual 
environment, and copy it over to each student's home dir. If a student 
totally screws his environment in MOL, a simple copy of the original 
master image solves his problem. The school could even create master 
images for several excercises, and during the course update the images 
in the student's directories to evolve with the excercises.

No doubt other uses can be imagined.

Cheers,

Geert