[wplug] VM options and subversion server setups and other lug info

[Ted Rodgers]

If your 64 bit system supports hardware virtualization, I'd use kvm /
qemu-kvm.  I've been using it now for a couple years it gotten pretty nice.
The overhead is less than you'd get from vmware and likley virtualbox and I
know you pass through usb port(s) and other devices to your guest(s); I used
to have to do that to manually upgrade the software on a WIndow Mobile
phone.  Some distros probably provide a gui wrapper for setup (RedHat is now
backing kvm and on the way to not supporting Xen so they likely have a gui),
but the command line side of kvm isn't very difficult.

Vmware is probably the most externally-polished virtualization tool and
virtualbox has worked well for me before when I used it to run Linux under
osX, too..  The downside to either of those 2 is that in my experience
they've been a lot more prone to breaking than kvm / qemu-kvm.  Their
modules need rebuilt after a kernel upgrade, for example.  With kvm the
drivers you need are in-kernel, so with an upgrade you just include them and
there's no need to rebuild out-of-tree drivers and hope they still build.

Another thing you mentioned was booting the virutal os "live" at system
boot.  I know for sure that vmware and kvm can both let you install to raw
block devices, so you could use a real partition with real fs rather than
your OS living in a file.  Virtualbox can likely do the same thing.  It's
just a matter of drivers being present on your guest OS to support both the
real and emulated hardware.
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