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I am at the point in installing Ubuntu 10.04 in VMWare Workstation 8.0 where the following dialog box appears:
My physical PC has a AMD 970 B.E. quad-core processor. I've never installed an OS in VMWare before, and I'd rather not do this twice. I assume I should have "1" for "number of processors," but as for "number of cores per processor," I'm not sure.
Can someone offer some advice?
Edit: I did find a very similar thread here, but no clear answer was given. I understand that it is ultimately up to the user, but I have no baseline to go by here, never having installed an O.S. on VMWare.
Thinking rationally about this, say I used "1 processor, 4 cores." This could potentially detract from the performance of the host OS. However, would I be using both the host and guest OS's simultaneously? Likely never. I'd obviously be working in one or the other. Once I am done using VMWare, I could terminate it and return to the host OS. Is my thinking wrong here? – None – 2011-10-18T06:55:14.533
1@H3br3wHamm3r81 It's OK in my opinion. Today's virtual machines are capable enough so that if something pops up in the host OS you shouldn't have any problems due to virtual machine load. – AndrejaKo – 2011-10-18T07:02:25.880
@H3br3wHamm3r81 Actually there's one additional reason why you may want to limit the number. If you're planning on using some very old applications, it could be that some of them may have problems with more than one thread executing at a time. I never had such a problem, but I heard people report it. Do note that it has nothing to do with vitualization, but with having more than one processor or core in the system. – AndrejaKo – 2011-10-18T07:06:47.433