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This sounds a lot like they're trying to steal VMWare's market and integrate it right into the OS. More innovation - just like their built-in web browser, upcoming antivirus protection, firewall, and now virtual machines. Anyone still want to claim this this isn't an illegal leverage of their OS monopoly?

Why bother with Virtual PC? If you can get Windows to run, you can dual-boot. Whoops. Don't like rebooting? http://www.vmware.com/

Y helo thar VMWare!

For general stuff like web-browsing, etc, I find it runs XP just as fast as if it were running on the real machine, not in a VM.

Oh, and they have the software for Linux, too (But none for FreeBSD AFAICT ;_;)

In fact, this post is being typed from XP installed in VMware running on W2K.

WORKSFORME

I wouldn't let Windows 98 SE run on the entire environment;
if it crashes BSOD style how am I going to send an email or carry on working.

Also I couldn't let Windows 98 SE touch the internet on it's own,
there are way too many successful exploits out there.

Windows 98 SE is great, very fast, stable and protected but only if run under emulation.
You can always have full screen mode (fwin -auth), and tab on-and-off into the protective host OS.

Virtualizing Windows XP doesn't work so well.
Sure it seems protected and more stable, but kinda slow.

For those who use VMware ESX server, note that you can prevent one virtual machine from using this attack on another virtual machine in the same physical system. You can set sched.cpu.htsharing=none in a VM's config file to effectively disable HT for this vm only. You can also try:

sched.cpu.htsharing=internal for an SMP VM to disallow it from sharing a package with vcpus from another VM, but allow the two vcpus from this VM to share. More is explained in the hyperthreading (8) man page and in the HT whitepapper: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx21_hyperthreading.pdf

If you have only a single VM with untrusted users on a given box, you could set that VM to "none" sharing while allowing other VMs to continue to take advantage of HT.

I don't know how many Slashdotters use ESX, but you've got it admit it has some pretty cool features.

VMWare has a 30 day trial for their basic product, made everlasting with a serial number.

It will let you just virtualise the computer. Much easier than installing on a new PC (And lets you install yoour distro straight from the ISO).

[I can't wait until Linux] has at least ONE application that is useful for my business.

VMware runs on Linux... ;-)

Nevertheless, MS has cleverly played the...
With MS you can run LInux but with LInux you can't run MS card...

I didn't read that in the article or press release about Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server are two different products. Virtual Server can run on XP, but (a) not as a production machine and (b)it's a pain in the ass on slower systems, and creates more security problems if it's your personal workstation, considering Virtual Server requires IIS be installed on XP. VMWare Workstation is more stable and secure on XP.

This Tech Republic Article:
Understanding the difference between Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 2004 lists an overview of the differences. I'd love to see Virtual PC 2005 support Linux and perhaps even Solaris 10, but I doubt it will be added until the end of next year.

Since we are not alone facing this problem I suggest we join as a task force to setup a bunch of virtual machine with the proper tools installed to read those archives.

Some people reading us may have the required software.
We can get a vwmare trial licence and setup a Linux drive and a Win 3.11 drive (guest drives are host files, philes are easy 2 share and plug somewhere else, got it?).

I can't tell everything right away here, but we need a common keyword to find each other safely: let say MAIRCHIVEL (0 at google today).

hum... BTW does anybody remember this mail client running with the scheduler on windows 3.11 ? it would be nice to see it with a brand new name ;-)

(if you find me too cryptic you may be not enough interested by a solution, perhaps some other nerds here will explain more zan me)

You could ask someone else to compile a patched kernel for you, or you could install Linux inside VMWare or something similar and then patch and compile the kernel inside that. All of these products can be evaluated for free. If you have a CD drive that Linux can access you could maybe even just boot a LiveCD like KNOPPIX and compile a new kernel using it.

My past experience is that the inherit problems with Windows makes it a less productive environment eventually.
Security problems, Corrupted irrecoverable files, viruses, trojans, worms, and a system that decays with time - becoming slower and slower. Pure paranoia.

In Linux, sure there will be a learning curve often a long one.
1 year (?) .. it all depends how persistant you are.
But after that - you just can't possibly go back to using just Windows.

Now if you work with Windows files (Corel Draw, Excel Macros) or even program for Windows like i do (Visual Studio, C#)
you can set an environment to make the best of both worlds.
I use CrossOver/ Wine (for the common MS apps), Win4Lin (for a cute embedded Win98) and Vmware (Windows XP).
This way I have what it's not granted to Windows users : much choice, security and flexibility.

Most of the time I am on Linux (95%) - as I have some bad memories of Windows, also find it very boring and featureless.
Take for example your Internet/File Browser.
Does it come with Newsfeed? A W3C Validator? And complete FTP capabilitities?
I can FTP to a site, open up a document, edit it and when I save it - it uploads the changes for me.
How convenient is that?
I can exchange documents between many FTP sites with much ease.
What about if I right click on a file I can navigate through a series of pop-up windows displaying directories so that eventually I can click "Copy Here" or "Move Here".
In Windows you have to either CTRL+C then fiddle your way through various folders and then CTRL+V
Or perhaps open two Windows and drag and drop between them? Kinda Clumsy.

So its like that - much power and a lot of flexibility.

Our version of "Notepad" is so powerful, it recognizes the syntax and highlights your code be it HTML, CSS or even C#.
If you are on KDE .. Kwrite allows for 80+ different language or script markups, with colour-highlight and silent error checking.
Not to mention the cascading indentation trees ..

Then you need Outlook to have Sticky notes.
Ours work independantly, and accepts Rich Text Formatting.

The convenience of Virtual Desktop can only lend to better productivity.

Sure you probably can (given the time and resources) download all these gimmicks and add-ons from freeware and shareware sites.
But God knows what you've installed with it as well.

Linux makes even Windows users more productive and they can use it for their advantage.

See it as a tool and powerful infrastructure enviroment, rather than abandoning Windows for good and joining a restrictive cult.

The possibilities are endless and I could go on and on ...

Linux is very stable, much faster, more secure
So don't just have Windows - have two operating systems (or more) in one.
If you truly care about productivity - of course.
(and security, and stability, and speed, and peace)

no.
Microsoft has a strong partnership with that company.
Microsoft strongest allies uses Vmware.

I wonder if Win4Lin will be attacked though.

This new series is remarkable. I recently was lucky enough to buy one via ebay. Although it is not an officially supported platform yet, I have it running VMWare ESX Server 2.5, with 7 Virtual Machines, 6 of them Gentoo Linux and one Windows 2003 Server. My overall CPU utilization is less than 10% average... I can't begin to tell how fast it runs...

Running a lot of virtual machines a'la VMware.

[...]but RHEL is still missing a few things:

-Xen or virtualization solution like VMWare, Virtual Server, Solaris Zones

Excuse me? We're using VMware Workstation here, running on a Fedora Core 2 host.

Do your homework and read the specs. VMware has been running on Linux since ancient versions.

I'm thinking "go ahead". I'll do the same thing tonight.

If you don't want to delete your Windows or Linux partitions, you can probably run Solaris inside a VM, like VMWare.

The main reason I'm installing Solaris is to test the cross-platform compability on the programs I develop. But who knows, maybe I'll fall in love with it.. :-)

True AV and AT (anti-trojan) SW engineers uses VMWARE for their studies and dissemination of malacious flotsam of codes floating around the internet.

But the article is "A Good Thing" because it shows EITHER that Wine isn't 100% Microcrap or is more robust against viruses.

Take your pick.

Everyone loves Linux games, right? Well, the crazy people over at VMware (owned by the same people that own EMC Corporation) decided to try Running Linux games with VMware. So next time you receive a linux game, strike up VMware and see what you can do (or not).

The reality is that almost no other commercial software vendor will provide you with updates if you aren't current on maintenance, let alone pirated the software in the first place.

Ehh, what? Seems like a CLEAR MANDATE to me!

It's called VMWare

https://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/newstore/index. jsp

• BeOS
• IBM OS/2 and OS/2 Warp
• Minix
• QNX
• SCO Unix
• UnixWare

They give a reason:

Longer term, virtualisation features in next-generation CPUs should make it much easier to support unmodified OSes: at that time we will reconsider Windows support.

www.vmware.com
1 box.
Lots of VMs.
Accessible from anywhere over IP no matter what OS each VM is running and no matter what state the "machine" is in, be it hung on boot, crashed, or fiddling with BIOS. All doable from a remote location.

Virtual Server is actually neat. I'm running it, but not for anything mission-critical.
Where it comes in handy is for things like server consolidation, or for a testbed environment. It's like VMWare, but it runs as a service.
Speaking of which, there is VMWare ESX
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/esx_features .html

ESX runs using a modified Linux kernel, and it's like an OS that was built to run other OSes. It costs a pretty penny (it's meant for big SMP x86 machines, anyways), but if you need to consolidate or virtualize hardware, it would be a great way to go.

Do you need to test a multi-machine app? Don't feel like buying more hardware yet? Guess what technology solves that problem ...

VM-Ware?

Really, how is this different? When the OS rides directly "on the metal", you're supposed to get the best performance. Abstract the hardware layer and yes, you can do tricks like this but you pay for it in ticks. Maybe individually affordable hardware now has the ticks to spare. That, and while I love VM-Ware, it's still subject to the goings-on of the underlying OS...

Crap, wasn't the 386 supposed to do this? If only Intel had written the hardware abstraction layer instead of trusting OS vendors to do "what's right"...

It is not clear to me that your mom's computer needs cannot be met using Linux together with Win4Lin (also here), WineX (Cedega) (also here), wine, VMWare, etc.
I suspect that not all of these would be needed by your mom and some things still might not work. However, not all (windows) applications she might want will run on Apple machines. In fact, not all windows applications will run on windows machines.

The Xen researchers are mostly conscientious, smart people who, fairly enough, would like to see their work have some commercial impact. I really wish they'd stop beating their chests over benchmarks that show them beating a three year old version of our desktop product, though.

All right... so while I accept most of what you have said earlier as quite informative, I do take strong objection to the above statement. You do realize that the research community is forced to benchmark against Workstation 3.x because your EULA in later versions prevent any of us from publishing benchmarking numbers (Look at the Restrictions section in the EULA for Workstation 4.x).

While I understand that there might be commercial reasons behind it, it seems that VMware wants to play in the research field (publish papers at all the top systems conferences) but not allow anyone to try and reproduce what their research claims.

Disclaimer: I have worked on virtualization projects including Xen.

You have to buy vmware?
http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/newstore/wkst_ev al_login.jsp
I just go there each month.

Last week I was thinking about exactly this question. I've been using VMware to do the same sort of thing form my laptop, but it has the disadvantage of being costly, non-portable (no easy or possibly legal installing to usb drives/etc.), and not pre-configured for the purpose of this VPM. But in my experience VMware is quicker, feeling almost like the emulated computer was the host computer.

At any rate, I installed and ran this VPM software, and it certainly seems to deliver, and has a very nice collection of pre-installed apps. Sadly the performance is about as poor as you might expect (that's running it off a HD, not a USB drive). Every operation takes a while to complete, click on Firefox, and wait 40 seconds for it to ask which profile you want to use (this is after first use). Type in a URL and wait at least 30 seconds for any signs that it's coming up. My laptop is only P4M 1.8Ghz, so no doubt performance would be much better on a more recent machine.

Still, pretty neat, though not entirely usable for me.

quincy

Well, I've been in a similar situation.

However, the department I was in was almost entirely into *nix development, but we would have to do some kinda stuff related to Windows from time to time.

We also learnt that it's quite useful for you to have some kinda virtual machine like VMWare on your box, to boot into alternate OSes. Really really useful.

And the problem is that it's really hard being in the development industry with only Linux -- sooner or later, you're going to run into some client who'd ask you for development on the Windows platform. And it's not as simple as saying, sorry, we don't do Windows :-)

I'm a consultant as well, however I run Debian linux as my main distribution, and VMWare which has Windows XP installed in it. This way I can make copies of Windows XP at different phases (no patches, full patched no SP2, full patch with SP2).

VMWare is not cheap, but it's well worth the money. What's bizarre is I still have Windows lockup and crash, but my computer is a lot more stable. In fact I've never had linux lock up and crash on me.

Clients are really impressed when they see the "computer" still working (Linux), while Windows is sitting at a blue screen of death. You can have 2 or 3 copies of Windows XP, and setup a samba server on the host as a background server to store your files. No data loss, no worrying about viruses or spyware, no concern about whether to use or not use SP2 (use 'em both).

Most of this has been said before in this thread, but this "solution" is bad for at least the following reasons:

1) Older USB printers will need to keep functioning, and if I can print, I can pretend to print to a memory stick.
2) Newer PCs will need to run with older OSes for companies that standardize on at-least-one-year-old OSes
3) the overall problem is solvable TODAY by system policies and/or device-driver enhancements, see below.

If I buy an expensive ink-jet printer in 2005, I'm NOT going to throw it away in 2006 just because "output is not allowed."

If my company buys me a new PC a month after Longhorn comes out, my IT people will probably want XP Pro not Longhorn on it, at least for a few months.

If system policies can't shut down access to the USB ports, a custom driver can. The most straighforward solution is just to have a policy configuration to allow rw, ro, or no access USB devices of various types or various models. For example, no access to disk-like devices that aren't on a "white list," r/o access to whitelisted devices such as popular digicams or mp3 devices, and rw access to printer devices. This will deter all but the most determined employees. Combine this with CMOS settings to prevent booting from USB and "problem 99% solved." Trusting your employees will take care of the other 1%.

I don't know if such policies are possible in today's MS-Windows, but if not this can be changed soley in software, either in MS-Windows only or with the help of modified device drivers.

Hmm, maybe someone in the Linux community can write this solution up and "beat Longhorn" to the market:

Attention Corporate America:
Are you tired of your employees stealing data through their USB wristwatches? Use ACME Linux, with built-in USB firewall with an easy to use interface. Featuring USB-block to stop unauthorized access in its tracks and USB-alarm to page you when someone tries. Also featuring USB-alert to e-mail managers of authorized USB use so they can flag unusual patterns....

Unlike other solutions to this problem, this works with your existing hardware investment, and with additional sofware from companies like vmware is works with your existing software investment too.

PeopleSoft , vmware, HP, Trustix , MySQL , SAFLINK , FTI , Constant Data , SurfControl , Software AG , Agnitum , Volante , JBoss , FalconStor , Intershop, Tarantella, Software AG and Bull ,
etc..., etc..., etc...

Google is your friend: 703,000 for novell software partner. (0.58 seconds)

I did a yum update the other day for my Fedora Core 1 laptop - and it downloaded a new gdk_pixbuf package that broke VMWare so that I couldn't get it to run.

I'd guess this pixbuf is used to draw the widgets in XWindows. Here's a thread on this.

I had to go through some contortions to get yum to retrograde my FC laptop and get VMWare (a show-stopper if not working) going.

Since now there's a *new* vulnerability, I'm waiting until the dust settles and this is reasonably resolved before I try this again.

First time I ever broke something with yum...

... to develop a "wrapper" (forgive my bad terminology if its wrong, I couldn't think of the name!)

I think "VMWare" is the name you're struggling for.

More information is available here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vmanage/vc_features .html#vmotion

Disclaimer, I work for a company that sells (amongst other products) VMWare, and I do VMWare installs/consolidations.

This is a troublesome issue for all users of virtual systems in a production environment. You will have the same problem with application support as well - call up tech support for some application and if you even mention that it's running on a virtual system you can pretty much guarentee that they won't help you until you re-create the issue on a non-virtualized system. The same used to be true of applications running under Citrix until so many companies started using it that app developers couldn't get away with not supporting it.

Fortunately, VMWare has an answer to this in the form of a V2P tool (Virtual to Physical). This allows you to transfer an existing virtual environment to a standalone, physical machine. Once you've done this, you can safely volley the issue back to M$ or whomever and they won't have the "but it's running under a virtual machine" crutch that most application tech support companies would use.

I don't think you can run OSX on x86 using any emulator/vm yet

but you can use vmware and an iso of knoppix to check out different browsers available for linux

Provide a licence of VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 to each student + one virtual machine with all the required School security. The virtual machine will be controlled, privided and mainained by the school. Access will be controlled and allowed only using the specific VM, that can be configured to be read-only, and expiring. The student still can do whatever they want with their laptop, even run Linux if they want, but the access to the school will be uniform and totally controlled.

Except for use as a virtual server. One the Mac, Virtual PC is an amazing x86 emulator - it comes with a normal OEM version of Windows. On x86 it has all the uses that VMware does. The top hits on Google for VMware include a lot of articles on using it as a "honeypot". It's also very useful for testing purposes.

The core technology is probably still pretty good, but watch out when the original Conenctix engineers leave. Connectix has always done wonderfully tricky things. Stacker was a pretty cool idea (and a performance boost in a certain range of CPU vs drive speed ratios). But RAMDoubler did the same thing to memory to allow more programs to run in less physical RAM; it patched the OS' memory-access routines. And was no less stable than the Mac OS of the time was. They also wrote a better 68040 emulator than Apple had back when parts of the OS hadn't been rewritten for PowerPC yet; that was SpeedDoubler. They also did a dual-platform Playstation emulator that was never perfect, but was good enough for a hundred-plus games, they even defended it against a Sony lawsuit. Which probably cost them enough money that they wound up getting acquired by Microsoft.

How is this different from VMWare? They also have a Linux client, you can have your main OS be Linux, and be running win 2003 server/xp ect virtauly. I use vmware for testing/development; I have a windows 2000 advanced server running IIS and SQL set up to test within a virtual Machine, I do what ever I need to do then just drag-drop a backup copy of the Machine over - and I got a brand new dev enviro - no reinstall or config! Saves Butloads of time and not to mention no need to have 4-5 systems running under your desk. The plain Version of VM can run just about any version of windows, dos 6.0,
Mandrake Linux 8.2, 9.0
Red Hat Linux 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1
SuSE Linux 7.3, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1
SLES 7, 7 patch 2, 8
Turbolinux Server 7.0, Enterprise Server 8, Workstation 8

NetWare 5.1, 6, 6.5

Solaris x86 Platform Edition 9 (experimental), 10 beta (experimental)

and FreeBSD 4.0-4.6.2, 4.8, 5.0 more specs here

How is this different from VMWare? They also have a Linux client, you can have your main OS be Linux, and be running win 2003 server/xp ect virtauly. I use vmware for testing/development; I have a windows 2000 advanced server running IIS and SQL set up to test within a virtual Machine, I do what ever I need to do then just drag-drop a backup copy of the Machine over - and I got a brand new dev enviro - no reinstall or config! Saves Butloads of time and not to mention no need to have 4-5 systems running under your desk. The plain Version of VM can run just about any version of windows, dos 6.0,
Mandrake Linux 8.2, 9.0
Red Hat Linux 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1
SuSE Linux 7.3, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1
SLES 7, 7 patch 2, 8
Turbolinux Server 7.0, Enterprise Server 8, Workstation 8

NetWare 5.1, 6, 6.5

Solaris x86 Platform Edition 9 (experimental), 10 beta (experimental)

and FreeBSD 4.0-4.6.2, 4.8, 5.0 more specs here

...that, being close to the NeXT and/or Rhapsody visually, the BeOS had a different internal architecture... Not saying that it file system was not fully POSIX comparable, 'tis it had no access control => not suitable for many tasks.
Although it was a really good and promising system, once...

P.S. Did anyone mention that the BeBox really was a, of course, heavily customized, PCC and is GNU/Linux & NetBSD compatible?
P.P.S. This text was written in Micro$oft Word in a VmWare Workstation inside a Bochs running in the PearPC

FC2 apparently does some wackyish things with the kernel, such as 4K stacks which breaks nvidia driver compatibility, and VMWare 4.5 breakage.

Apparently you've never used an HP-branded machine. 3 motherboards, 2 power supplies, and 2 new CPUs in 6 months is also a bit embarassing. Maybe people should just start looking at VMware's ESX Server if they want high availability environments. Machine's hardware failing? Just move it to new metal while it's still running. It's worked great for my company, and is still cheaper than Sun. (You're not limited by a particular OS, either.)

Sounds like you are a candidate for VMWare workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC. Maybe you could save yourself a reload or twelve by saving your disk image.

The central debate here is about how to best use F/OSS development resources (people and code). The assumption seems to be that everyone who cares about F/OSS should come together on a single strategy for dealing with Microsoft. But a monoculture within the F/OSS community is exactly what we're fighting against in Microsoft! Must we become the enemy to defeat the enemy?

Most F/OSS developers want to see GNU/Linux succeed in the sense of becoming a widespread desktop alternative. Those who bother thinking about why they want this are most likely to come up with a fundamental reason: choice.

Survival for GNU/Linux is a question of the niches it is able to successfully occupy. For the moment these niches include the desktops of F/OSS developers and Internet server farms. The problem with the general user desktop niche is first that it's not really a niche per se, but more importantly, it's completely dominated by Microsoft. GNU/Linux is like a small mammal running around near the end of the age of dinosaurs. What it has going for it is adaptibility. Rather than give up adaptibility and become just another dinosaur, GNU/Linux needs to find another way to occupy the general desktop niche.

What I'd like to suggest is that the desktop niche really needs to be bifurcated in such a way that GNU/Linux can survive there as a small mammal, without needing to become a dinosaur. That is, it needs a place on the desktop where it can run without necessarily displacing Windows. One way this could be done is though a Windows port of User Mode Linux, but that's not really going far enough in my opinion.

What is really needed is an OSS virtual machine monitor (VMM) for PCs, under control of which both Windows and GNU/Linux (and any other OS!) could run separately and equally. Vmware shows what this might look like, but with Vmware the host operating system runs along side the VMM rather than on top of it. It sort of achieves "separate" but not "equal".

The problem with current approaches to PC VMMs is that they suffer from certain architectural limitations in virtualizing the CPU. These limitations probably could have been eliminated several hardware generations ago, were it not for the unholy alliance of Microsoft and Intel. But there is some hope that that alliance could be broken, if AMD would implement virtualizability in its CPUs and/or IBM would apply carrots and sticks to Intel on behalf of GNU/Linux.

The ultimate goal is freedom to innovate from the lowest levels of software on up. This can only be truely achieved by a complete OSS platform, as access to the source is what enables the kind of innovation that does not require reinventing the wheel when something at a lower level doesn't work the way you want it to. On the other hand, some F/OSS developers may be perfectly happy developing on top of Windows or some OS-independent application platform. Indeed, there's no reason to believe that .NET isn't "good enough" for some of them.

VMWare does that with their ESX Server product. It uses Linux 2.4 as a booloader for the virtualization layer, but otherwise it seems to run on bare metal.

VMWare just chopped $100 off the price of VMWare Workstation. You can now buy version 4.5 for $199 (boxed) or $189 (download).

At the lower price, Im considering buying it myself. (I would buy only one copy for only one host OS.) Maybe theyre feeling the heat from all that open source competition.