vmware questions on ubuntu

[romeoagogo]

Hi, I want to setup an older PC I have (XP 2400+, 1gig PC2700) as a server type box for all my media. I want to run ubuntu on it because its easy to setup and offers more options for server-y things later. My big problem however is that I also want this server to be able to stream movies to my xbox360. The only way I can see doing that is by using WinXP on VMWare and wmp11 to stream. So my questions are these -

1) Will encoding performance suffer using a VM? I encode all my videoa to WMV once they are downloaded using WMEncoder 9 and then stream them with WMP11.

2) Is file access between Ubuntu and the XP VM easy? Meaning can I setup a partition for all my media files and access them from both Ubuntu and the VM?

3) Will the VM be able to stream content without any hiccups? Will it maintain a decent speed?

4) Do you think this will work and is worth doing to keep my "server" running linux?

Thanks

 

[tamasrepus]

1) Will encoding performance suffer using a VM? I encode all my videoa to WMV once they are downloaded using WMEncoder 9 and then stream them with WMP11.

In general, yes, VMWare provides excellent CPU performance.

2) Is file access between Ubuntu and the XP VM easy? Meaning can I setup a partition for all my media files and access them from both Ubuntu and the VM?

See Samba. Not any more difficult than accessing files remotely with any other OS.

3) Will the VM be able to stream content without any hiccups? Will it maintain a decent speed?

Probably... The biggest bottleneck in VM performance (or any system, really) is not giving it enough RAM.

4) Do you think this will work and is worth doing to keep my "server" running linux?

My answer is obivously going to be biased, but yes.