OT: SW2006 on PCLinuxOS and VirtualBox

Neat. Nice monitor you must have... It looks like about 1900x1200

There are naturally a few questions, such as whether or not software OpenGL is required, or whether you have tried newer versions of SW. In other words, could you actually do paying work on this?

Hey Dale,

Yeah, it's nice and it's a Dell 2407WPF running at 1920 X 1200. The video driver used here is VirualBox Graphics Adapter (VBOX) and SW defaults to software OGL so, yes, there is no OGL support, yet. .. (or, I don't know how to activate it?)

The VBox driver supports a wide range of resolutions (very large options!). It also goes full screen, autosizes (as shown) and is very stable.

For speed reference, doing 3 ctrl-q's on the Aeriks 200 model.. XP sp2 (native OS, 2 gigs) - 8.1, 8.3, 8.5 seconds. XP sp 2 (PCLinuxOS/VirtualBox, 512 megs) 8.2, 8.4, 8.7 seconds.

No significant difference in rebuild performance but video is not the best. I personally see that changing...

They seem to be working on trunks for OGL...

I'm very confident this can be used in production, no doubt in my mind.

Interesting. The memory difference could also explain a lot of the very minimal performance difference. For me though, hardware OpenGL has to work before I can consider it ready for production. Not that I require 2008 RealView support or aanything...

I'm glad to see they're working on the OpenGL support. Running SW in a virtual machine could have some real benefits.

Forgive my ignorance but I am sitting here wondering why someone would want to do this...so to what benefits do you refer?

Dale,

Changing the memory for this model or others I have tested does little but I did up the memory to 1 gig and video memory to 64 megs.. Out of 10 large surface models (>20 megs) the rebuild performance is basically the same (the audi-tt is only 1 second diff), I mean, were talking plus 1-3 seconds on a virtual machine running on a different OS with limited resources, very impressive. Anyhow, the difference in performance is not what I expected, I expected a lot worse.

The VBox graphics are very good as is, seriously, I can spin the model around and change graphic modes very fast and it's stable,.. it's a very workable setup. As for OGL,... OGL would make it nicer or better but not having it would not make most users, wanting a OS option, turned off by it.. I'm not turned off by what I see, it's very good as it is. But, being realistic,.. OGL would be a luxury in this free virtual setup. And, I did not expect to see the VBox notes showing the much on OGL interest.

So, seeing the VBox guys are working on a OGL guest is nice to know. OGL will happen, reading at the forums and notes, it's only a matter of a month or two for VBox users to have a working version..

BTW, anyone running OGL games on Linux can tell you, (or ask me) it's very good!

.. 8^)

Performance. I have run into people running SW on Macs for the same reason. For another reason, why not have four or five virtual machines running, and work on different parts or assemblies at the same time on multiple processors?

Stability. If a virtual machines crashes bad it will be as good as new the next time it is started unlike a pure Windows environment where when something bad happens you have to reinstall the OS.

And there is the enjoyment of being on a real OS.

TOP

I only wish now tha I had time to try it myself.

Dale,

If you want to get something running quick with some games on it, I'd suggest getting Sabayon iso and just boot from CD/DVD.

Although I think PCLinuxOS is nicer, Sabayons latest has a lot in it, kind of a all-in-one, like games, and has the latest kernal (bells and whistles).

Just download (it's big, so be patient, may take days on a torrent) the iso and burn to disk. (otherwise, just order a $5 CD/DVD if you don't have time/patience for the above)

..

I've never heard of that distro. I see their focus is on "bleeding edge Linux technologies", aparently based on Gentto.

It's kind of ironic to see you playing with a "bleeding edge" OS in contrast to your usual position on the quality of SW... On the other hand, bleeding edge Linux may turn out to be more stable. I doubt your earning your living on it either. Or are you doing some projects on Pro/E for Linux? (Is that still an option?)

I had thought of trying an Ubuntu live disk on my laptop. This one does look like more fun.

Reminds me of your claim you run "lights out manufacturing" only without the lights out part....LOL..........

"Most engineers and posters to this forum are hardly professional" - Jon Banquer - High School Drop Out , posted June 2 , 2006

"What you have shown is how "clueless" you and other engineers are" - Jon Banquer - High School Drop Out with ADD, posted - June 30, 2007

Tom, Can you imagine what your product liability premiums would look like with this nut case behind the wheel?

Is XP loaded from a normal retail distribution CD, and is there anything tricky about using the license key number?

Is the registration on the machine (from MS's perspective) the same whether it booted into XP, or into linux/XP in virtual box?

Bill

The WPA question could mean a few things for your current system (and hardware changes in the virtual system) or how your license is set (as a company) or just running it for 30 days to try out so,.. otherwise, a unused license or call M$ for a new code.

I'll post a few links... to do a search... " xp linux virtual activation wpa"

http://> Is XP loaded from a normal retail distribution CD, and is there anything

That's better than I would have expected on a virtual machine. What processor are you running this on?

I have the live disk .iso downloaded, but haven't taken the time to burn it yet. The download was an interesting ordeal. The torrents looked like they were going to take weeks, so I tried one of the direct downloads (Thank God for mirrors at academic institutions). When I clicked on the direct link in Opera 9, Windows rebooted. Ouch. I tried IE 7, and the page warned me that IE was incompatible. It was right. IE crashed without a word. I switched to a machine with Firefox, which wanted to use FireFTP (a plug-in I had installed). FireFTP has a 4GB limit. So, I had to force Firefox to download it without FTP. Now, If only I can remember the right settings in Nero to make a bootable disk instead of a coaster...

Yeah, not terrible, it's tolerable,.. considering.

Don't laugh but I've been patiently waiting for a good 3X factor before I buy a new mobo/cpu... ...Pentium 4 @ 3.0 mhz, ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, 2gigs, Quadro FX500

(Anna Woods Punch Holder file takes 296 seconds, which is a bit strange because a similar P4 listed resolved in 263 seconds but, he is also running on earlier service pack?)

oh, some iso burner links...

(nero instructions) (lot's of freeware)

..

BTW, I have to add... this benchmark is good in proving my point that SW2007 is BAD in a production environment! It gives a really good example of how long SW2007 takes to release the data AFTER the resolve time!!!! The rebuild time in the stats box and those posting their times is NOT a fair assessment of the TRUE rebuild time! (image/line quality set to the lowest!) SW2006 releases the data at nearly half the time, plus SW2007 is slower! I don't know how people can deal with this????????

..

zxys wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com:

It's a dual-core P4? This would be even more impressive on a single-core, even with Hyperthreading.

Thanks for the link to Nero instructions. I'd expect to be able to think my way though it, but I'm always reduced to trial and error.

Dale,

It's a single core with HT on. (I can do a test with HT off and it should be faster)

Also, to add to the above,.. the 296 sec time is without any changes to the image quality,.. with the image quality changed to the lowest, I can get 290-283 sec range. Then,... after the feature stats misleading value , SW has to then release the data to the video card.. (this is where SW2006 is better). ..with my test, SW2007 is about 5% slower plus per the feature stats plus, SW2007 releases data to the video a lot slower, which means,.. another performance 10-20% plus hit depending on the data being used!

..

innews: snipped-for-privacy@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com:

I've been noticing this discrepancy between rebuild time and user wait time for a long time now. For my parts, 2007 doesn't seem significantly worse. However, Anna's part is a real-world worst case scenario. All those holes make for a lot of polygons. I wonder if they monkeyed with the tesselation for 2007. It seems that might be a ParaSolid issue though. Not sure.

SW in general has this lag problem though, and not only for 3D objects. Text in table cells can lag several seconds behind typing. All of htis has been gradually getting worse since 2003, IIRC. That was when SW stopped feeling snappy.