Yousef Ourabi

Desktop Linux is reporting Ubuntu will deploy the commercial virtualization product by parallels, “parallels workstation” to its apt repositories allowing for easy installs…

Ok, this comes not long after my gripes about desktop virtualization on linux. This won’t fix it either. The problem is not that parallels is hard to install — it’s really not (dpkg -i parallels.deb) — it’s that integration sucks with any open source desktop such as kde or gnome. It’s that parallels only releases 32 bit versions of its linux software rendering any system with more than 3 gigs of ram useless. Its that the “parallels workstaiton” for linux just in not as good as “parallels” for mac os x, here are some reasons.

1) Poor integration. The OS X version runs like a bat out of hell, and has one particular feature called “Unity” that allows OS X users to run windows applications almost as stand alone applications — no need for the clunky interface, just click on the IE logo and it starts and runs like a native application — behind the scenes parallels is starting a virtualized instance and all that jazz — but it is highly integrated.

2) Speed. Oh my god, having seen paralles and vmware fusion, no virtualization package for linux runs as fast, both VMWare and Parallels are clunky and slow. There are performance tweaks that provide a marginal boost (5%) — but OS X virtualization products take full advantage for the modern intel cpu’s in new macs that support VMT, intels virtualization optimizations and extensions, while for linux they seem to code to the lowest comment denominator.

3) Graphical Accelerations. OS X users can run games and graphic programs programmed towards the windows direct x 8.1 api. Why can’t they do this for linux as well?

Filed under: Linux, Virtualization