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Its also awesome that VMWare Server is available free to download. I installed it on my laptop running Ubuntu and can run Windows XP.

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

As an alternative for those who don't have a separate partition, but have the space for it, I'd highly recommend trying VMWare out. I suppose it's possible it doesn't work, but everything else I've tried on vmware lately (from workstation to ESX) has worked fine.

Further to my last post, have you considered using Ubuntu on your family machine and running your essential Windows aps in a Windows OS under VMWare? This provides all the security of the Linux machine (host), with a VM running Windows.

VMWare gives you the option to not save across sessions, this ensures any changes made are lost. (You can save across sessions if you want to, but for security you may chose otherwise). It ensures each and every time your family use the machine, it is stable, virus free and repeatable... and should reduce instances of it 'acting stupid' as your family put it.

VMWare performance is pretty good. Its 'very close' in performance to running the OS natively. I've been running Ubuntu and FreeBSD, and a couple of other obscure OS's on my Windows machine and can vouch that its pretty damn good. I've run the Ubuntu within Ubuntu just for kicks, and its performance is great.

You can try the free VMware player here. You can try the free browser appliances to get the feel for what it offers. I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say, if you try it out.

How about the Browser Appliance from VMWare? It sounds like everything you need; you can have it started automatically when the machine is started, and everything should be good. You can have anything you want underneath; set it once and never touch it again.

There is no safe browser

Really?

I would point out that such an OS would need to be task oriented, rather than user oriented.
If I start working a novel task, one that I've never done before, I'd hate to have to 'teach' my OS how to behave.
Many people I know already customize their OS for the task they are doing.
The easiest way is to just create several user accounts or desktops, each of which runs different 'background' applications. My gaming logon in windows runs very few services, keeping the system as lean as possible , whereas my 'day-to-day' login has virus scanners, screensavers, desktop backgrounds etc configured.
The next iteration of this, for me, at least, is the virtual appliance. While popular in servers for a while now, they are really beginning to take off for home /desktop use.
I am beginning to use these quite frequently, creating my own installations that contain the tools neccessary for a given task.
Biggest advantages include cross-platform, wide availabilty, and great uptime (as long as you backup your images.

Or just use free VMWare player and your choice of virtual machine for browsing.

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ca t/45

Some of the problems with 'virtual firewalls' can be solved through real firewalls on ... virtual machines (i.e. Sieve at http://sievefirewall.sourceforge.net/ or at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/24 5)

You don't seem to be aware that Vmware has come out with a more graceful solution to copying the full VMware images around.

VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html

What you do here is setup the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure in the Server farm area, then simply terminal Service into the Virtual workstation assigned to you by the administrator from any location ie from another corporate desktop using any base OS, from any remote location (please use a secure VPN).

I received an e-mail from VMWare just a few days ago on this very subject. They seem to be partnering up with Wyse to provide a complete solution for using VMs as thin clients. I haven't had time to fully investigate, but it may be worth a look.

That sounds like a poor man's implementation of VMWare ACE which does *exactly* what the guy wants...

I'm not even going to get started on all the VM's rule/suck discussion. Instead, I'll just point out that VMWare ACE might be a something worth looking at.

Many people above are suggesting Citrix, Altris, etc... but what nobody seems to have mentioned is that there are several companies already doing this (Clearcube for one), and that VMware are partnering with IBM, Citrix, Altiris, and many more, to push their recently launched Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI).

VDI does pretty much exactly what E1ven is asking for, however instead of downloading a complete image to your computer every day, the virtual machine runs on a central server, with thin clients at the desktop connecting to it through a remote session.

If you want to know how big this is going to be, just have a look at some of the names working with VMware on this:
http://www.vmware.com/partners/alliances/solutions /

I first heard of this about 6 months ago, when I heard that IBM were working with VMware & Citrix to provide a solution they called VHCI (Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure). IBM have shown it's possible to run up to 12 virtual machines on a single blade server. Hot swop and automatic failover is possible too, with no downtime for the user. IBM's blade hardware actively looks to warn of failures before they occur, and they've integrated this with VMware's management software, allowing live client sessions to be automatically moved off failing hardware.

We've got around 100 clients at our firm and we're very interested in this idea. We looked at Citrix but it just wasn't viable. We've a huge variety of software in use, much of which is updated 3-4 times a year, and configuring that on a bank of Citrix servers would be a management nightmare. The VMware approach lets us keep our current network management and software deployment tools, provides a simple migration route, and offers all the benefits of thin client computing without needing to retrain all our staff.

Right now virtual desktops are just a little too expensive (about £500 per desktop instead of £300 for a new Dell), but all the signs are that in the next 6-12 months it'll become a viable option for us.

Some background info for anyone interested:

Eweek article on IBM's VHCI
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1873113,00.as p

IBM Press Release: October 2005
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/793 5.wss

VMware's VDI Page
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html

VMware's VDI discussion forum:
http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID =276

Many people above are suggesting Citrix, Altris, etc... but what nobody seems to have mentioned is that there are several companies already doing this (Clearcube for one), and that VMware are partnering with IBM, Citrix, Altiris, and many more, to push their recently launched Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI).

VDI does pretty much exactly what E1ven is asking for, however instead of downloading a complete image to your computer every day, the virtual machine runs on a central server, with thin clients at the desktop connecting to it through a remote session.

If you want to know how big this is going to be, just have a look at some of the names working with VMware on this:
http://www.vmware.com/partners/alliances/solutions /

I first heard of this about 6 months ago, when I heard that IBM were working with VMware & Citrix to provide a solution they called VHCI (Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure). IBM have shown it's possible to run up to 12 virtual machines on a single blade server. Hot swop and automatic failover is possible too, with no downtime for the user. IBM's blade hardware actively looks to warn of failures before they occur, and they've integrated this with VMware's management software, allowing live client sessions to be automatically moved off failing hardware.

We've got around 100 clients at our firm and we're very interested in this idea. We looked at Citrix but it just wasn't viable. We've a huge variety of software in use, much of which is updated 3-4 times a year, and configuring that on a bank of Citrix servers would be a management nightmare. The VMware approach lets us keep our current network management and software deployment tools, provides a simple migration route, and offers all the benefits of thin client computing without needing to retrain all our staff.

Right now virtual desktops are just a little too expensive (about £500 per desktop instead of £300 for a new Dell), but all the signs are that in the next 6-12 months it'll become a viable option for us.

Some background info for anyone interested:

Eweek article on IBM's VHCI
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1873113,00.as p

IBM Press Release: October 2005
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/793 5.wss

VMware's VDI Page
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html

VMware's VDI discussion forum:
http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID =276

Many people above are suggesting Citrix, Altris, etc... but what nobody seems to have mentioned is that there are several companies already doing this (Clearcube for one), and that VMware are partnering with IBM, Citrix, Altiris, and many more, to push their recently launched Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI).

VDI does pretty much exactly what E1ven is asking for, however instead of downloading a complete image to your computer every day, the virtual machine runs on a central server, with thin clients at the desktop connecting to it through a remote session.

If you want to know how big this is going to be, just have a look at some of the names working with VMware on this:
http://www.vmware.com/partners/alliances/solutions /

I first heard of this about 6 months ago, when I heard that IBM were working with VMware & Citrix to provide a solution they called VHCI (Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure). IBM have shown it's possible to run up to 12 virtual machines on a single blade server. Hot swop and automatic failover is possible too, with no downtime for the user. IBM's blade hardware actively looks to warn of failures before they occur, and they've integrated this with VMware's management software, allowing live client sessions to be automatically moved off failing hardware.

We've got around 100 clients at our firm and we're very interested in this idea. We looked at Citrix but it just wasn't viable. We've a huge variety of software in use, much of which is updated 3-4 times a year, and configuring that on a bank of Citrix servers would be a management nightmare. The VMware approach lets us keep our current network management and software deployment tools, provides a simple migration route, and offers all the benefits of thin client computing without needing to retrain all our staff.

Right now virtual desktops are just a little too expensive (about £500 per desktop instead of £300 for a new Dell), but all the signs are that in the next 6-12 months it'll become a viable option for us.

Some background info for anyone interested:

Eweek article on IBM's VHCI
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1873113,00.as p

IBM Press Release: October 2005
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/793 5.wss

VMware's VDI Page
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html

VMware's VDI discussion forum:
http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID =276

VMware has a solution which does exactly what the OP describes. Take a look at VMWare ACE and VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

VMware has a solution which does exactly what the OP describes. Take a look at VMWare ACE and VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

VMWare offers two different solutions for this type of problem; VMWware ACE and VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

VMWare ACE http://www.vmware.com/products/ace/
VMWare ACE provides a managed architecture for deploying virtual machines to individual computers. In your scenario it would still be necessary to use roaming profiles or some other technique to allow a user to log on to different machines and have the same user experience. Data files (My Documents, etc.) could be stored on network shares. ACE is most likely not an appropriate solution for you.

VMWare VDI http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html
VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides an architecture where the user actually uses a virtual machine running on a server with only a thin client on the desktop. The virtual machine runs on ESXServer and can be secured in the data center. A user can access the same virtual machine from any desktop; local or remote. VDI is likely an appropriate solution for you.

VMWare offers two different solutions for this type of problem; VMWware ACE and VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

VMWare ACE http://www.vmware.com/products/ace/
VMWare ACE provides a managed architecture for deploying virtual machines to individual computers. In your scenario it would still be necessary to use roaming profiles or some other technique to allow a user to log on to different machines and have the same user experience. Data files (My Documents, etc.) could be stored on network shares. ACE is most likely not an appropriate solution for you.

VMWare VDI http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html
VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides an architecture where the user actually uses a virtual machine running on a server with only a thin client on the desktop. The virtual machine runs on ESXServer and can be secured in the data center. A user can access the same virtual machine from any desktop; local or remote. VDI is likely an appropriate solution for you.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ace/

"With VMware ACE, security administrators package an IT-managed PC within a secured virtual machine and deploy it to an unmanaged physical PC. Once installed, VMware ACE offers complete control of the hardware configuration and networking capabilities of an unmanaged PC, transforming it into an IT-compliant PC endpoint."

Not so much a converter as a "runner":

LiveCD Virtual Appliance
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/28 4

That's pretty slick; that basically goes the other way, from a LiveCD to a Virtual Machine. I wonder if there's an easy way to save the disk image plus the state of the running machine to a file, so that you can insert a BootCD, start it in a VM, and then save that VM to a file and have it, even after the CD is ejected.

Anyway, it's a lot of stuff like that, which really makes me think that virtualization is neat technology, even for the home/enthuasiast user. Its advantages in the datacenter are obvious, but I think there are more than enough applications for home uses that it'll become an essential part of computing, as soon as it gets built into mainstream OSes. (Much to the detriment of VMWare perhaps, although they do give away an edition right now, so maybe that's not their bread and butter as it is.)

Enterprise Desktop Products

Support the needs of a global workforce by providing virtualized computing environments to enterprise employees, partners, and customers to secure access and manage resources. Provide a full PC experience without compromising security or hampering users. Improve desktop manageability, security, and mobility by apply virtualization technologies to client PCs and the data center for server hosted desktops.

http://www.vmware.com/products/enterprise_desktop. html.

The VMware web site often gives the impression that the company employs a lot of people who have no understanding of computers. The announcement has no links to the winners! The web pages don't display well in Firefox. There are numerous other flaws.

If I didn't already know that VMware is a reputable company, I would never buy anything from a company with such a clueless web site. Obviously someone at VMware thinks that non-technical people have something valuable to contribute to a technical company, even though they cannot understand what they are doing.

Winner: HowNetWorks

Second Place: Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance.

Third Place: Sieve Firewall

The VMware web site often gives the impression that the company employs a lot of people who have no understanding of computers. The announcement has no links to the winners! The web pages don't display well in Firefox. There are numerous other flaws.

If I didn't already know that VMware is a reputable company, I would never buy anything from a company with such a clueless web site. Obviously someone at VMware thinks that non-technical people have something valuable to contribute to a technical company, even though they cannot understand what they are doing.

Winner: HowNetWorks

Second Place: Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance.

Third Place: Sieve Firewall

The VMware web site often gives the impression that the company employs a lot of people who have no understanding of computers. The announcement has no links to the winners! The web pages don't display well in Firefox. There are numerous other flaws.

If I didn't already know that VMware is a reputable company, I would never buy anything from a company with such a clueless web site. Obviously someone at VMware thinks that non-technical people have something valuable to contribute to a technical company, even though they cannot understand what they are doing.

Winner: HowNetWorks

Second Place: Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance.

Third Place: Sieve Firewall

>in fact, I'd be surprised if someone didn't have a VM-to-BootCD converter

Not so much a converter as a "runner":

LiveCD Virtual Appliance
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/28 4

Drop in any LiveCD iso and boot it up.

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/challenge/wi nners.html

Original /. post back on 2/28/06
"VMware has announced that they will be supplying $200,000 in prizes for what they call The Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. Big industry names such as Tim O'Reilly and Mark Shuttleworth are among the judges."
From the article:
"Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community."

but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes

Maybe in your world but that is a small part of what using virtualization is about. You are looking at things from a desktop and software view, you need to think about virtualization big picture. I am not going to present a powerpoint presentation as I can not give the big picture view in a /. post but, the bigger picture you look at, the more the concept of virtualization makes sense for many uses. It is not for every process, every server, or every company either. Here is a good place to start. Redundancy, load balancing, uptime, ease of upgrading and adding new hardware, monitoring, and automation, reduction in costs to name some of the big reasons.

In our organization, we swapped about 15 3-5years old servers that were no longer under warranty. We replaced them with 3 new physical servers and VMWare ESX. Without VMWare, we would have to either consolidate server processes onto less new machines, or buy 15 new servers (an assload faster then we needed even for a middle of the road server like a HP DL380 G4) and maintain status quo. This whole process of conversion was completed without having to reinstall a single OS or configure any new installs. We used the P2V tools (physical to virtual tools) to convert the existing install base to the virtual servers. We now have complete redundancy for all of our physical hardware which we did not have before AND we bought 12 less servers. The setup required more space on our SAN but less space in the physical servers which is the industry goal with "space consolidation" anyway. Of course we had some older servers that were not moved over to VMWare, they are very IO and memory intensive. They would work in VMWare but we do not want to drag down a whole VM server because of one virtual machines load requirements.

I do not work for a virtualization company so no plugs are intended here. I do realize the industry is going this route and not because everyone else is doing it or because it is the newest buzz word, it just makes good sense in many situations.

First prize was awarded to Mikko Hiltunen, Erno Kuusela, Joachim Viide, Mika Seppänen and Jani Kenttälä of Oulu, Finland, for creating HowNetWorks. HowNetWorks is an always-on, all-in-one, personal network troubleshooting console for those tired of the "laborious work" of network debugging. No more writing complicated sniffer filters, no more searching for ways to reproduce failures. HowNetWorks takes the next step in sniffer evolution-simply fetch the relevant data and throw it to your favorite analyzer.

Second prize was awarded to Andrew Macdonell, Michael Closson, Paul Nalos and Paul Lu of Edmonton, Alberta, for creating the Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance. The Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance makes it simple to access files across the network regardless of location, operating system or type of file sharing technology (SSH, NFS, SMB, etc.). It simplifies file access while maintaining security.

Third prize was awarded to Michael C. Jett of Senath, Mo., and Kennieth A. Goodwin of Paragould, Ark., for creating Sieve Firewall. Sieve Firewall makes it easy for Windows users to set up and use a transparent bridging firewall without having to learn Linux. The virtual appliance is managed by a Windows GUI application. The resulting XML configuration files are loaded to the Sieve Firewall virtual appliance and filtering can be up and running in minutes. Because the firewall is completely invisible to the outside world, it is not vulnerable to attacks that target more traditional firewalls. Not only can this appliance be used to create safe home networks, it can be used to manage and prioritize traffic in a multi-department, complex business network.

More info available here.

VMware has announced an upcoming beta of their MacOS product. Maybe it will be faster? http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/mac.html

is lifted from Sec. 3.2 of the article http://www.vmware.com/pdf/asplos235_adams.pdf in the story, and yes, it is very inefficient... that is why is titled "How NOT to write an isPrime function"

"And yes, VMWare are hardly likely to mention that Xen-style virtualisation is going to be better now, are they?"

You are missing the point.

Xen running Linux is a software solution (called paravirtualization). Yes, it is faster than VMware's current offering (software-based virtualization). But VMware is working on addressing that (see their efforts on VMI and now paravirt_ops).

Xen running Windows is a hardware-assisted solution. Did you actually run it? I did. Windows is about 2X slower than native. That is exactly what VMware is saying in TFA.

In summary:
paravirtualization is better than software-based virtualization, which is better than hardware-assisted virtualization.

Conclusion:
To virtualize Linux, use paravirtualization (because you have access to the source code)
To virtualize Windows, use software-based virtualization (because you don't have access to the source code).

That leaves hardware-assisted virtualization in the blue. But don't worry, Intel and AMD are working on addressing that. With the help of VMware. Why? What does VMware has to gain? Simple: if the virtualization market becomes 4 times bigger, but is divided equally amongst 3 players (Microsoft, VMware, Xen), then VMware will still make more money than it does today...

If you don't believe any of this, I recommend you read
"VMware and CPU virtualization technology"
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2005/pac346.pd f
which explains it in more details.

I am a VMware consultant and work with virtualization every day. There are two reasons why I don't believe that this is much of a threat.

Virtualization presents static virtual hardware - whatever virtualization method that they utilize would present the same hardware to every vrtual machine (unless they coded it with a huge library of different virtual devices, which involves recoding the drivers for each device). From the device manager, you could check to see if the hardware in your system matches the hardware in your computer. It would be possible to run a tool that scans the hardware that the system sees and compares it to lists of known virtual hardware, then reports to the user what kind of virtualization is being utilized to run the system (with VMware virtualization, for example, about 8 of the devices listed are labeled with VMware as the hardware vendor - making it very obvious to people in the know that they are using a VM). Then, if there isn't supposed to be any virtualization going on, you could hopefully get your system into safe mode and fix the problem (reboot the system in some mode where it doesn't start the VM).

The second reason why I don't believe that this is much of a threat is because P2V Migrations - that is, migrating a physical machine into a virtual machine - are pretty tough to do seemlessly. They typically require downtime of the system that we are migrating, while we employ an imaging program (like Ghost) to capture an image, and we then restore that image into the target VM, before stripping out the physical driver information so that the OS can cleanly detect the new virtual hardware. If anyone has much experience with imaging software, you know that it doesn't work too well if the system is still running while you capture the image (I know that there are several programs that do it, but my experience is that those images don't have a perfect success ratio and will often be unusable). The first time a P2Ved system boots, you have to reinstall the all new virtual hardware into it, including setting up the network adapter with IP information (since Windows binds IP information to the adapter, and the physical adapter is no longer present it loses your IP info). This experience would also hopefully alert the user that something is happening, especially since the hacker's virtualizaton platform would probably not have signed drivers, which would harass the user when they install on their non-hardware.

--Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
:b

--Seriously tho; I submitted the link to your post as a Feature Suggestion to the Vmware forums; maybe they can implement this in software.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?thread ID=51395

I'm sorry. but why is my post (above) marked as troll? I've been a slashdot reader for a while, but haven't posted a lot of comments. Please clarify. The headline is truly wrong. It *is* VMware. check out http://www.vmware.com/

#4 Q: How is VMware Server different from Workstation? Will Workstation also be free?

A: VMware will continue to charge for Workstation and has no plans to drop its price. Workstation has unique, advanced features that are not available in VMware Server. These features include memory optimization and the ability to manage multi-tier configurations and multiple snapshots. Workstation is a productivity tool used by developers and technical professionals on an individual PC. VMware will continue to develop compelling features on this product that dramatically streamline software testing and development.

[Disclaimer: I work at VMware]

It should be possible to do what you described, i.e. to remote your X session over to your Mac and run the console. You might see screwed up colors on your display. If you don't care about actually running the full VMware Remote Console and you just want remote access to the guest's display, however, it's much easier to just activate the VNC server for the VM by adding:

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = TRUE
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = xxxx ... to your config file and then using an off-the-shelf VNC client for the Mac. There are some caveats, however; please read the KB article (1246) on this:

http://kb.vmware.com/vmtnkb/search.do?cmd=displayK C&docType=kc&externalId=1246&sliceId=SAL_Public&di alogID=589398&stateId=0%200%20591108&doctag=Author ,%20KB%20Article

http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization .html

How is VMWare Workstation different from VMWare Server?

Mac users would benefit if PC users were able to run a virtualised OS X.

VMware says "software developers" are one of the primary targets of their Workstation product, and web developers are a part of that. Web sites are naturally quite portable, so you can test in IE and Firefox and Opera under Windows and just hope that it is good enough in Safari. There's not enough reason to go out and buy a Mac to test your web site, because it's expensive and your site probably works 'okay' anyway. But that means Mac users visiting your site in Safari will see an untested and imperfect design – it should still be usable, but lacking the polish that was given to other browsers.

If it were possible to download a VMware-compatible copy of OS X that provides the web browser and development tools, even if it's locked into running inside VMware and is stripped down so as to not compete with the full Mac desktop experience, those web developers would have the ability to easily and cheaply test their sites in every operating system and every web browser.

This is particularly important now that most browsers work well on the current web standards, and are beginning to move on to new features and restore some innovation in the browser space – for example, the HTML canvas is something that's emerging as a widely-supported feature, but it's sufficiently new and experimental that every browser has quirks in its implementation. By making it easy and cheap for developers to test their sites under Safari on OS X, Apple can help them understand its quirks and support it to the same level as any other browser and any other OS.

There are many good resources on the web. The standard resource is The Linux Documentation Project, or http://www.tldp.org/. Another site, which is much better than it used to be, is http://www.linux.com/. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ has many great articles to guide you through a wide variety of small projects. A great newer site with helpful articles is http://www.howtoforge.com/. For help on the desktop side, http://www.desktoplinux.com/ has many articles you may find of use. Documentation and information about KDE is, of course, available at http://www.kde.org/ and it's affiliated sites (linked from their homepage). IBM is always putting up new articles at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/ that can provide usefull information for development work under Linux. You may also find the articles on http://www.debian.org/, http://www.gentoo.org/, and http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ usefull even though the articles were written for other distros.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can always head over to irc.freenode.net. The #suse and #opensuse channels will be of particular interest to you. You may find #kde helpful for KDE applications. ##linux is basically a catch-all channel; we'll generally be able to field just about any question you throw at us there. If we can't, we will point you in the right direction.

Keeping up with the FOSS news can also teach you quite a bit. You already know about Slashdot. http://osnews.com/ is another very nice resource. http://www.kerneltrap.org/ is a less frequently updated site which can provide you with more advanced information. Keeping an eye on http://www.freshmeat.net/ can help you get a better feel for the various software available for Linux. And of course, with gmail you can setup alerts for Linux, KDE, etc.

If you really want to learn more about Linux, there's no better way than distro hopping. Go to http://www.vmware.com/ and download their free VMWare Server 1.0 to allow you to try out various distros without having to wipe your hard drive. This does, however, require you have a decent amount of RAM (I'd recommend at least 1 GB). Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ for a fairly complete list of the available Linux distros, sorted by popularity.

If all these links really don't solve your problems, take yourself over to your best local bookstore and buy a book or two. The drawback of doing this, however, is that most of them will be pretty much out of date by the time they hit the shelves. On the other hand, they will give you a great foundation upon which you can build (update yourself) easily by utilizing the online resources.

Also, never forget about http://www.google.com/linux!

Maybe you should do some more reading, especially since your last post basically admitted that you hadn't been reading anything previously and were speculating.

Here's a thought, first start with the actual VMI interface: http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/vmi_specs.html

Read that, and see that it's a standardized API

Then read this again (actually for the first time) that I posted earlier

http://news.com.com/VMware-friendly+change+likely+ for+Linux/2100-7344_3-6061019.html?tag=nefd.top where the current stable kernel developer likes VMware's solution of a non-Xen specific implementation, rather than Xen native and everybody else uses shims into Xen to get into the kernel.

Then come back here, after you are informed and not speculating anymore, realizing that when the current stable kernel developer says he agrees with VMware's methodology (a common VM layer rather than a specific one to Xen), that you were seriously incorrect. That you are saying that the person responsible for the stable kernel is incorrect because it goes against the philosophy of the kernel. You are just so incorrect it's actually hurting me.

Disclaimer: In addition to being opinionated, I've used Xen and VMware in an attempt to deploy an ISP hosting environment.

Actually, the guest OS can very much benefit from being cooperatively virtualized.

A lot of realtime code is run along side the kernel under a rudimentary hypervisor (Google for nanokernels, Adeos and RTLinux do this sort of thing). In this very important case, it is usually quite a pain to require the OS to have to implement the infrastructure to support emulated devices when it could be using a hypercall infrastructure like Xen. The real potential isn't the gigabyte-sized general-purpose OS guests, it's the 40 kilobyte realtime handlers.

If you're running VMware to run some Windows terminals under a beefy Linux box, that's great. It's an important use case.

However, in addition to this, Xen caters to situations with tiny realtime handlers running along side the a larger interface OS. Little dedicated systems controlling things like Avionics, X-ray equipment, or tracking systems. Xen is an architecture for revolutionary new systems. VMware is a crutch to prop up existing systems, and VMI is designed to efficiently implement that crutch. I don't want to take away people's crutches, I just don't want to impede the revolution.

In my case, specifically, the combination of Xen, a SAN, and CLVM has been consistently less trouble, less management, and higher performance than anything we achieved with VMware. Considering my development partner is a VMware dealer, you can bet that we exhausted their possibilities before diving into Xen. The Xen architecture has simply been better for my purposes.

If you desire to have any real understanding of the issues, take a look at the VMI spec and then the Xen Hypercall docs. Note the proliferation of x86 instructions and constructs in the former and the clean implementation of abstract interfaces in the latter.

VMware is designed to do literal translation of instructions that are pretty much architecture specific. This is because that is how they virtualize--by instruction trapping and translation. The VMI is effectively defined in terms of fencing off x86 specific instructions, memory management, and certain IO. The idea is that everything "dangerous" is trapped and emulated.

The Xen hypercall interface, on the other hand, is much clearer and targeted at actually developing towards it somewhere above a machine code level. Rather than just providing mitigation for basic instructions and processor architecture, Xen provides an hypercall layer and abstractions of pagetable maps / IO that are not nearly as architecture specific. In Xen, a single priviledged domain is allowed to do the dangerous stuff (think kernel-space / user-space split) and an efficient, set of interfaces is used to selectively provide those services to the subdomains.

Of course XenSource and VMware can't agree. VMware doesn't want to have to use abstractions when their selling point is sandboxing binaries. XenSource doesn't want to compromise a good architecture for hardware partitioning just so that a commerical vendor (with sharing issues) can implement a simple meat grinder to churn native code into sandboxed code backed by their clever emulated hardware devices.

Silly Historical Note: If you have enough history under your belt, the VMI might remind you of the architecture behind the Windows NT compatability layer to run NT code on the DEC Alpha processor. The Xen Hypercall system will likely remind you of the architecture of the kernel-space / user-space split among Unixes. If you recognize these, I'm sure you remember which one was a solid, successful product and which one was a buggy source of enterprise-level headaches.

A method that might ease the testing phase of this would be to use a hosted virtualization platform. That way, you can generate the ISO and attach it to a VM as a CD (cutting out the burn/reburn process) and install it onto a virtual machine. Another benefit to this strategy is that you aren't wiping out your system several times a day until everything is right - you can keep your system intact and repeatedly reinstall the virtual machine until you're happy with a build that you'll want to move to your machine.

Unfortunately, this technique won't work too well for driver preparation (virtual machines are typically presented with generic virtual hardware), but it will help you to iron out any kinks as far as Apps are concerned (like the parent mentions with Windows Media Player).

Yes, WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not virtualization software. But you have to be pretty ignorant to call it a "hack". Making the Windows GUI APIs work under Linux takes some fairly sophisticated programming. You can't just say, "oh, the app wants me to create a Windows frame, I'll create a GTK frame instead." You have to do event handling, implement a lot of screen widgetry, and a lot of other stuff that's non-trivial.

You're also being a little dim if you think Xen is the reason Virtual PC is free. Xen does not run under Windows. Virtual PC runs only under Windows. Also, Xen does not run guest OSs "out of the box" — you have to have a special port.

Nor does Xen have anything to do with VMWare being free — because it's not. Yes, VMWare Server is free, but VMWare workstation is still $189.

VMWare has the lead in the enterprise arena for Virtual Infrastructure. Comparing Microsoft's Virtual Server to ESX Starter, the features are pretty much one for one. Past those features though is where the enterprise is interested, and are willing to pay for those features. But like you said, hopefully management just doesn't look at the dollar figure, but at the big picture with what works best for their business practices.

Looking at Microsoft's features page:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Lib rary/aace7325-ef73-46b3-929b-d1e6dbd0df691033.mspx

And VMWare's features page:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/#_tabfeature s

Currently VMware has these edges in the virtual machine features:
*SMP support (looks though like Microsoft may offer this in the next beta after the current beta)
*Clustering of the hosts, not just the virtual machines
*Backup consolidation - imagine being able to backup 40+ windows boxes with only one backup client at the file level (not just the virtual machine images), even if the windows virtual machines are powered off. This saves on having to load backup agents on each virtual, and saves a load of cpu horsepower.
*64 bit support
*Multiple virtual machine clustering with a shared disk
*Live migration between physical hosts - imagine moving a SQL virtual server, as it is being used, to another physical box. Doing a hardware upgrade on the prior physical box, then migrating back. Users don't notice a thing.
*Direct SAN support
*Multipathing for network traffic or to the shared storage

There are probably other ones that I didn't mention, but those are the ones that count for me. VMware knows Microsoft isn't going to sit idle and will probably be adding more on top of that. Same goes for Microsoft, but they have a lot of catching up to do.

--Yep. For small-medium networks, use Squid. Allow me to recommend my Squid VM Appliance, located here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messag eID=359128

--1.5GB growable disk, preconfigured to store objects up to 20MB in size, and Free software to boot. Only uses ~100MB RAM in the guest. Point all browsers at the proxy (10.0.244.4:3128), do a Win Update on _one_ machine, and the other machines will DL the updates from the proxy.

--Vmware Player is free, and can be downloaded here:

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

--Yep. For small-medium networks, use Squid. Allow me to recommend my Squid VM Appliance, located here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messag eID=359128

--1.5GB growable disk, preconfigured to store objects up to 20MB in size, and Free software to boot. Only uses ~100MB RAM in the guest. Point all browsers at the proxy (10.0.244.4:3128), do a Win Update on _one_ machine, and the other machines will DL the updates from the proxy.

--Vmware Player is free, and can be downloaded here:

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

1) Install a proxy server. You probably have a router of some kind. Perhaps it's a linux box. What you could use to save your bandwidth is use some of your server's HD space to download the common items (like patches from Windows Updates). Since the proxy _can_ be transparrent, there is nothing to configure on the other computers. There are many ways to do this. My suggestion: Squid. In particular, I have used the implementation in ClarkConnect. It's easy to setup, and there is a free version. If you want the pay version, it's extremely inexpensive. http://www.clarkconnect.com/

2) Use nLite. nLite is a utility that makes custom Windows install CDs/DVDs. With the program, you can make an updated CD that installs SP2, all the updates, and even drivers. It even has the option to make the install "unattended", requireing no input by you. This might not be an option since you apparently don't have the Volume License version of of XP. None the less, highly recommended for those who have to re-install often. http://www.nliteos.com/

3) Consider some way to harden the researcher's experiance. Don't want to install Linux on your search stations? Use VMWare Player and the Browser Appliance! By doing this, you effectivly remove any possiblity of Viruses, Spyware or otherwise unwanted downloads. And the best part is... if you don't like/can't use the browser appliance to do what you need... go back to windows. http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

Hope these suggestions help.

--Pathway

--Thanks for the plug. :)

--Allow me to recommend my Squid virtual appliance (doesn't have Tools installed, but quite handy when doing Win updates -- and also blocks pr0n and ads. Highly configurable, and also included FREE support scripts.)

http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/vm ware-squidserver--debian/v1.0-20060224/

Support forum linky:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messag eID=359128