Call for ideas!

[kberg]

Finaly we've checked in the completely rewritten Q₂ (working title ).
Now we ask You, if there are specific features, that You are missing from Q.

You know, we like to keep it simple...

Mike

*edit
The list:
_ run on Tiger (Tiger will be supported, but we're going to drop Panther)
_ Show/hide option (with hotkey) for menu/icon bar (at bottom of screen)
x Show/hide option for console (as in qemu for Windows and Linux) -> this is already in hit: ctrl-alt-2
_ Q drivers as FDD image. Win9x installs can't easily use the Q drivers in the HDD option in current version(s) -> I just perpared a CD-ROM image... that way, we can use the autorun option, which makes it even simpler... have to look, if we can mount 2 cd-roms at the same time, with the new -drive switch
_ drag and drop FDD and CD/DVD images onto the drive icons in the tray (good one!)
x Compact HDD image (to recover real drive space) -> is already in Q 0.9.0, will be back in Q2
x rag and drop to copy from Mac desktop/finder to virtual machine desktop -> is already in, if You have installed the Q Drivers, all files dropped on the VM/Q Control are copied to the Q Shared folder
_ tabbed interface (with the new OpenGL VGA output we can scale the VMs Screen, so tabbing might be possible. As we are working document-based now I'll have to look into the mechanics.
_ -nographic/-deamonize (Yes... I'm investigating, if it's possible to access the guest by VNC thru screen sharing )
_ -net socket option don't work too

_ kqemu support (I know )
_ USB support
_ OS 9 support

[mmulhern]

Run under 10.4.11 on my MBP (aka 0.9.1d104)

[mmulhern]

. . . .

but really.

- Show/hide option (with hotkey) for menu/icon bar (at bottom of screen)
- Show/hide option for console (as in qemu for Windows and Linux)
- Q drivers as FDD image. Win9x installs can't easily use the Q drivers in the HDD option in current version(s)
- drag and drop FDD and CD/DVD images onto the drive icons in the tray

[mmulhern]

and also. . .

- Compact HDD image (to recover real drive space)
- drag and drop to copy from Mac desktop/finder to virtual machine desktop

[Sven]

... In general, thus, it would be a good thing to try to gradually get into Q most of Virtual PC 7's best features: actually, Q could become, in some way, the Universal "Virtual PC 8" that Microsoft never released (and also a replacement for Classic on Intel macs)...

Another VM application which is very interesting is Innotek's VirtualBox: Q could eventually, maybe, become something like that, albeit simpler and - above all - more Mac-like.

Personally, I would like - as I also said in the blog - a tabbed interface, à la VMware Workstation/Server (for Windows and Linux; Vmware Fusion - and also Parallels Desktop - sadly has a less usable interface), or even à la Vinagre (see also here), the new VNC client in Ubuntu Hardy: but this is of course only a personal wish and certainly not urgent. Anyway, it would be good, maybe, to have slightly smaller preview icons in the Q Control window, as in VPC: more space for VMs.

More urgent items would be USB2 support, Classic (Mac OS 9) support and - as essentially was said in the previous posts - some form of "Q Additions" or "Q Tools", for better integration between the VMs and Mac OS X.

BTW, I just installed the four "big" Linux distros - Fedora 8, Mandriva 2008, OpenSUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.10 - in Q (it took a lot of hours, on a Core2Duo 2 GHz Mac mini), and they all work rather well, but of course slowly (almost à la Virtual PC on a PPC Mac): so another essential thing would be KQEMU virtualisation support, to speed things up on Intel machines (while on PPC machines, sadly, Q is usable only for very lightweight OSes, such as FreeDOS or ReactOS).

... And, thus, I also discovered that Fedora 8 has some form of built-in mouse integration: no need to press ctrl-alt to enter and exit the qemu window!

[Sven]

Some other more or less important things (but the first one is actually very important, IMHO):

* faster saving and restoring of VMs (takes around 2 minutes or even more on my Mac mini with Leopard, and often it hangs);

* activity lights - hard disk, DVD/CD, network, USB, etc. - in the lower status bar, à la VPC, Parallels Desktop and VirtualBox (while VMware Fusion strangely still lacks this feature);

* maybe keep the customisable toolbar in the qemu windows, while reserving the status bar for... exactly status-related items, as above;

* Windows Start Menu and applications in the Dock (well, this maybe is asking too much, at least for now: as it would be for Coherence/Unity/Seamless mode, of course...).

[martin.schmiderer]

Hi,

-nographic don't work on Leopard 10.5.1
-net socket option don't work too

My wishlist:
a running Q without Graphical output and Networking that works
or if it is so, Documentation how i can get it to work


Thanks a lot for this good job!

Regards,

Martin

[mmulhern]

Re the suggestion for show/hide of the console (CTL-Alt-2) switches the screen to the console, I was thinking more along the line of having it as a window beside the active virtual machine, rather than toggling CTL-Alt-1/2

[kberg]

@mmulhern

ic...
problem is, qemu has only support for one of the two, at the time. Idea is intresting...

Mike

[sammysheep]

Perhaps this is already available, but it would be cool to be able to boot the emulator from an already working installation of WinXP made by BootCamp by selecting the BootCamp Windows partition from the set of partitions.

[Venture37]

coreboot (linuxbios) support would be great for testing.

[popper]

Finaly we've checked in the completely rewritten Q₂ (working title ).
Now we ask You, if there are specific features, that You are missing from Q.

You know, we like to keep it simple...

Mike

_ kqemu support (I know )
_ USB support
_ OS 9 support

You Do?, then read, understand, and COMPILE IT WITH THE FreeVec ALtivec library thats been sat there for over 2 years for anyone to use freely for vast speed Improvements when running PPC on PPC.

http://freevec.org/

for such a small amount of time and effort on the Qemu porters time, Markos's Ativec/SIMD Freevec libray is just so cool and hes done most of the work for you already and still adding new replacement options all the time now...

all these improvements once included,unrolled, and compiled for everyones general PPC qemu use can then find themselves used in the KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine)
http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Status

http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Categor ... PowerPC%29

and perhaps even a PPC port of the OpenVZ based on and using KVM code
http://wiki.openvz.org/Bare_Metal_Installer


as a side note, USB2 is also a required current need so as to be able to use current generic wireless 1g/n and DVB-T TV and related usb devices to some degree in virualisation...

[popper]

btw you can talk directly with Markos (the ceator of Freevec lib)at the FreeVec thread http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/vi ... .php?t=387 thread

the powerdeveloper MB used to be called http://www.ppczone.org so just replace any old ppczone.org with the new powerdeveloper.org in the url if you find them referenced later looking foir freevec information.

btw this mb sems strange, i can register, post but not edit my posts for typo's and since after i submitt them, very odd.

[daveosx]

Great option would be a simple point and click setup for the VNC server setup.
I use Q to provide PC users (read maggots) access to a instance of Internet Explorer 7 on a single virtual machine that purges after each use. We do not permit the use of MS products in any of our locations however some of the necessary websites have implemented visual basic .net web applications written in direct x for MS windows Internet Explorer with directx to capture such things as name and address on simple forms. Yes they call themselves IT engineers and pull down those whopping 4 figure incomes. Sorry for the rant

Anyway I use a VNC instance to the server running Q to provide a Screen Sharing instance of IE when the people demand it.
I would like to be able to simply click a button to enable the Qemu session to act as a VNC server.
I know the Man pages give me the instructions but I use Q for the point and click.
Thanks for all your great efforts.

[mcostanzo]

First, I would like to thank all of the folks who are behind this AWESOME product. I am relatively new to the mac world and do have some things that I still must do using windows because our college is a mostly windows shop. The one thing I think would be nice is the ability to move the cursor in and out of the window without using the control-alt keystrokes. Otherwise, I am very happy with this product. Keep up the great work. I hope to contribute some money from my next pay check to your cause. I feel that I really do not have a right to request anything, until I have at least helped out in some way.

Thank you again,

Marc Costanzo