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Will Vanderpool Make Linux More Popular?
Digitaldonkey writes "New Scientist is reporting that Intel's forthcoming multi-core processor architecture, codenamed "Vanderpool", could undermine Microsoft's dominance by letting other operating systems run simultaneously more easily. From the article: 'The chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously.'"
Sounds great, but "..Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system" -- I didn't know that Apple would be releasing MacOS for other architectures. And I'm assuming it's not going to incorporate the PPC archtype.
not one bit.
sorry.
Sounds similar to what IBM does with the AS/400 - allowing hardware subsystems to run different operating systems.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
So we're looking at a chip that may be a reality in 2008-2009, but since New Scientist doesn't provide any hard info on the chip except for the funky code name, this is all very up in the air. Virtualisation software works pretty good today anyway. You can easily try out any flavour of Linux or BSD on your WinXP computer (or vice cersa) using VMWare today -- without having to "give up" Windows (or Linux).
...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.
Something tells me that it won't run Apple's operating system. It should only work on Macs.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
since when does internet explorer and word run easily together?
This doesn't mean that we will see Linux start generating Blue Screens Of Death does it?
So the chips will multitask by themselves? Would this not be like integrating vmware into the chip somehow? (Hardcoding some "master OS" into the chip, and not giving the real OS full control.) Would this not also allow for DRM/etc to be tightly integrated, as the OS doesn't control the computer anymore?
Umm...I know that Darwin runs x86, but unless this new chip also runs PowerPC code alongside x86 code I doubt you'll see OS X running alongside WinXP
I can run em both without spending 3 hours making the transition to linux only to find out i STILL can't make it work right, and have to go back to windows. and i keep coming back for more every time. damn you intriguing linux!!
There are already ways to run Linux on a windows machine, and visa versa.. (VMware comes to mind)
And with todays already beefy processors, it runs pretty good, albeit not perfectly..
It seems this would only impact the share of people who are already using VMware to do this sort of thing..
Who knows
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Seems like another case of technology history repeating itself. Still, the idea is fantastic although i don't see how a company like microsoft in the article can really benifit from it.
I don't know if that's saying much. Word and IE always crash each other anyway...
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
they couldn't make graphics drivers any more instable. Trying to make ATI/NV cards run on Linux and Windows simultaniously is like watching a quadrapalegic juggling.
Bye!
It may make Windows more popular, too. I've come across a bunch of people who want to play Windows-only games, but don't want to go through the hassle of going into Windows whenever they want to play something. If all you had to do was instantly switch over, it wouldn't be a big deal and I'm sure a lot more people would do it.
Anyways, the only way I can see the ability to run Windows and Linux simultaneously actually making Linux significantly more popular is in the workplace where the admins want to switch everybody over to Linux, but there's that one critical app that only runs on Windows...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Clustering, servers, dual-booting, emulation, dual-OS, blah-blah, and other geeky stuff isn't going to make Linux popular. It is just going to keep it alive in specialised applications. To become popular, geeks need to stop looking down on the average user and start treating them as a customer and design things even an idiot can use.
Finaly! Now I can run Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP at the same time!
Hey, maybe I could even emulate 3.1 and Win CE!
One more to add to the list:
1) hidden 64bit abilities
2) 5-7 ghz processor
3) multicore cpu
All this to make people delay their purchase of an athlon64?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Next on slashdot: Will a collection of AD&D figures help me get laid?
but if MS gets a hold of the bios like a recent article has stated they are trying to do, MS can lock out any OS they want with their "trustworthy computing" initiative. We all know that "trustworthy computing" is a metaphor for complete and utter lockdown by MS so your machine will only run Windows in the way MS says.
Let's hope that Intel can buck the MS trend and do something like this.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Windows has 16-bit color.
Check out: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
The article tries to make it sound so new. Mainframes and high end systems have been able to support multiple OS for a while now.
This could really cut out the relevance of application support behind an OS. Any application not supported by your current OS could be built in with the app and booted separately almost like a Knoppix CD.
Thinking particularly of games and multimedia, this could really shake things up.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Mods, why did you mod him down?! If you look, you can clearly see the comments.
Thanks
until the IT managers use it to run W2K, Win XP and other misc MS OS's all at once! Still pretty cool though. :)
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
Does anyone think their mother or father would switch because of what this article discusses?
Conversely, is this going to get businesses to try a new OS? No. If a business wants to try a new OS, in general, they can afford a machine dedicated to the new OS to try it out.
Will it make it easier to use Linux on a Windows machine? Yes.
Will my grandmother switch to Linux because of the new processor? No.
Same old, same old...
welcome our new multi-core processing overlords.
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
All Intel is doing is making their CPUs virtualizable (like the IBM S/370 mainframes) so that there will be cheaper and faster competitors to VMware. As others have pointed out, anything you can do with Vanderpool you can also do with VMware, just more slowly.
But you can already run all those operating systems at the same time - just get four different computers. If the hardware is two years old, all four of them together will probably cost less than this monster. Of course, communication between computers/CPUs/OSes will still be an issue - but oddly enough the article didn't give any details on Intel's solution to that problem either...
- OpenBSD on CPU#1 for security,
- Windows XP on CPU#2 for gaming,
- FreeBSD on CPU#3 for desktop and coding,
- and Linus on CPU#4 for continuous recompiling of the kernel.
" I think that #1 and #2 are mutually exclusive on the same box.And I wasn't aware that Linus was currently available as a source code distro.
I really doubt Linux will be very popular until Joe-Sixpack can take his copy of trophy-bass fishing and put it in the cdrom, have it autorun and install, and play seamlessly. And if you're the average windows user looking to experiment, then Knoppix works just fine. I don't see this being the magic bullet to make Linux the desktop fav of the average user.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Even if it does happen, will it matter? This really isn't relevant in the server world, where cheap x86 systems provide the benefit of separation-of-function, which will usually outweigh any savings one gets from piling apps onto one big machine. Putting all of those OS and application eggs into one basket seems like a pretty bad idea to me-just as it did to all of the old mainframe companies that switched to running numerous small systems.
As yet another toy for the desktop world it could be neat, as an easier option than VMWare and such, but how much of a market does something like that really have?
If they're trying to emphasize running multiple operating systems simultaneously, then why not compare two similar products in their analogy? Word is a word processor. IE is a web browser. Would it have been that much harder to say something like "Word or OpenOffice" or "Mozilla and Internet Explorer"?
Not a major issue, just a curious observation.
One thing that would really be an excellent feature in such a processor would be giving each OS running on there a choice of whether or not to use the legacy x86 instruction set or to directly code against the RISC core of the chip. I would think that that would offer some serious speed boosts to OSes like Linux, which are relatively easy to compile on new architectures (well, once someone writes a cross-compiler.) Without instructions having to undergo a CISC-to-RISC decoding and with compilers able to optimize directly for the core, we might be able to get a lot more out of the chip.
"The virtualisation software sits between the hard drive and the OS and must calculate how much free memory is allocated to that OS.
---
Intel's new hardware, codenamed Vanderpool, is significant because it cuts down on the amount of such trickery needed."
Clearly Intel's new technology will give user programs direct hardware access. What fun! I can't wait 'til this is deployed on a larger scale. (on other people's computers, that is)
And could someone please inform them that their computer will run much faster if they don't use their hard drive as RAM. Thanks.
My Sig: SEGV
My understanding is that it is technically possible to run a dual boot Wintel machine. It has even been technically possible to run virtual machines or use something like Cygwin to run code for other OS.
So the issue is not technical. The issue is whether MS wants other OS run on the machines that through licensing terms it claims control over. The issue is also whether Intel is going to give up a relationship with a company that has created the requirement for it's CPU.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'd think that Windows exploits that potentially give others control over the system or allow them to shutdown/reboot them could still cause problems for the other operating systems running.
If you haven't patched XP in the last day or so and someone finds that latest exploit and shuts down the PC is it going to shut down only that instance, or power off the entire system?
The article starts out sounding like the multi-layer CPU will be 'DESIGNED' to run mulitple OSes, but then the article itself admits "Vanderpool doesn't eliminate the need for virtualisation software, but it's going to make it perform a lot better,"
(And I am ignoring that virtualization is spelled wrong in the article.)
So the CPU is going to optimize for VMWare or MS Virtual Server? Ok, sure, why not...
But this is NOT the revolution that the article makes it sound like at first.
It is just a faster CPU that will let you DO EXACTLY what you are DOING TODAY. Running multiple OSes with Virtualization software.
Geesh, nice reporting guys...
"The chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously."
My machine already runs Windows and Linux together as well as Word and IE together.
Check out Rhapsody...
heh u r fuckerrs r faggets. lol u r stoopid i kickked geeks asses and put theyre heads in teh toilet!!1! heh.
this may be the reason for earlier story about MS wanting to control the BIOS too. So now the competition is between MS and Intel. This looks an interesting fight as both are titans and closely interdependent. Having killed other CPUs by promising a lot and delivering little, MS has put itself in a tight position. It can't fight with intel in the same way it fought with Digital. This is one of the reasons, why MS won't release 64 bit OS until intel gives go ahead (according to some newsgroup articles, people had seen 64-bit windows demo in 1997).
If bios is under MS control, and if MS OS is pre-installed, what are the chances that it will allow people to install other OS? Today, most pre-installed XP machine create single partition covering the entier the disk (many people think this is dangerous specially if the partition goes bad, you could loose all data). This effectively prevents installing linux atleast to non-hackers.
Still you can't discount Intel. Although MS can cotrol many PC manufacturers, most MB manufacturers will side with Intel and leave BIOS out of MS reach to be monopolized.
MS can play some dirty tricks too. If MS-OS detects that you are running some other OS too, then it can create some random fault in MS-OS and crash it which may give user the feeling that the other OS caused it. Anyone old enough to remember DR-DOS being incompatible with Windows warning?
From the 5th paragraph:
The virtualisation software sits between the hard drive and the OS and must calculate how much free memory is allocated to that OS.
My gawd - where do these idjots come from?
Did the idjot ever hear of dual boot or booting from the CD?
Microsoft sucks ass, but this is a childish troll. Move along.
Let me just say..
Thats fucking awesome!
YOU SUCCEED IT!
We're doomed.
Intel processors have supported the TSS (Task State Segment) for years. This is an architectural feature that enables true task switching in the processor. No OS or other software I'm aware of has ever used this feature of the architecture. The stated reason why it's not used in Windows is "performance". I can see why that would have been a concern 4 or 5 years ago, but it's not very well quantified. I have no idea at all if Linux makes use of the TSS in a way that differs from Windows.
from the whoreabull georgewellian fuddite payper liesense softwar gangster hostage ransom corepirate nazi ?pr? ?firm? stock markup FraUD execrable felons?
according to the pateNTdead eyecon0meter, they (the nazis) don't stand a chance, as they are opposing, not only the creator, but also the increasingly popular planet/population rescue initiative.
lookout bullow. the lights are coming up now. the nazi's phonIE ?pr? ?firm? stock markup FraUD spinolah's wearing thin all over the wwworld.
....it could allow you to run the last three versions of Windows so that you could run an app on the version of win32 that worked best. I think this would be great for all those Win98 games that refused to run in 2k or XP, yet I could have all my servers running in 2k3 server.
Or instead we could go back to some really freaking old technology called a "boot disk" to accomplish the same thing. Oh, wait, Knoppix and Lindows, among others, already allow this. Today.
Seriously, guys, when you're writing marketing hype that looks like news try to be not quite so stupid and obvious about it?
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Yea right. Linux never BSODs they just call it an Oops. But then again....
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0:kernel BUG at sched.c:1263!
No modules in ksyms, skipping objects
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c01aac85>] Not tainted
Using defaults from ksymoops -t elf32-i386 -a i386
EFLAGS: 00010213
eax: ffffffff ebx: c0148000 ecx: c01614e0 edx: c01614e0
esi: 00000001 edi: 00000000 ebp: c0149f24 esp: c0149f0c
ds: 0018 es: 0018
Process swapper (pid: 0, stackpage=c01490000)
Stack: c0149000 00000001 0000000 c0148000 00000001 00000000 c0149f30
c01ab122
c0148000 c0145d40 c01b3428 c0145d00 c01b3326 00000001 00000001
c0145d40 fffffffe c01b310a c0145d40 c0148000 00000000 c0144f40 c0449f88
Call Trace: [<c01ab122>] [<c01b3428>] [<c01b3326>] [<c01b310a>]
[<c019e81a>]
[<c019b4f0>] [<c01a0d33>] [<c019b4f0>] [<c019b513>]
[<c019b569>]
[<c019b25d>]
Code: 0f 0b ef 04 58 9c 38 c0 b8 00 e0 ff ff 21 e0 ff 40 04 89 45
>>EIP; c01aac85 <copy_mm+45/2b0> <=====
>>ebx; c0148000 <init_task_union+0/2000>
>>ecx; c01614e0 <batch_tqueue+0/14>
>>edx; c01614e0 <batch_tqueue+0/14>
>>ebp; c0149f24 <init_task_union+1f24/2000>
>>esp; c0149f0c <init_task_union+1f0c/2000>
Trace; c01ab122 <copy_files+132/290>
Trace; c01b3428 <access_process_vm+138/1c0>
Trace; c01b3326 <access_process_vm+36/1c0>
Trace; c01b310a <ptrace_attach+11a/210>
Trace; c019e81a <handle_vm86_fault+42a/9d0>
Trace; c019b4f0 <sys_rt_sigreturn+80/110>
Trace; c01a0d33 <sys_ipc+e3/270>
Trace; c019b4f0 <sys_rt_sigreturn+80/110>
Trace; c019b513 <sys_rt_sigreturn+a3/110>
Trace; c019b569 <sys_rt_sigreturn+f9/110>
Trace; c019b25d <restore_sigcontext+1d/140>
Code; c01aac85 <copy_mm+45/2b0>
00000000 <_EIP>:
Code; c01aac85 <copy_mm+45/2b0> <=====
0: 0f 0b ud2a <=====
Code; c01aac87 <copy_mm+47/2b0>
2: ef out %eax,(%dx)
Code; c01aac88 <copy_mm+48/2b0>
3: 04 58 add $0x58,%al
Code; c01aac8a <copy_mm+4a/2b0>
5: 9c pushf
Code; c01aac8b <copy_mm+4b/2b0>
6: 38 c0 cmp %al,%al
Code; c01aac8d <copy_mm+4d/2b0>
8: b8 00 e0 ff ff mov $0xffffe000,%eax
Code; c01aac92 <copy_mm+52/2b0>
d: 21 e0 and %esp,%eax
Code; c01aac94 <copy_mm+54/2b0>
f: ff 40 04 incl 0x4(%eax)
Code; c01aac97 <copy_mm+57/2b0>
12: 89 45 00 mov %eax,0x0(%ebp)
<0>Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
it would be great if somebody made a Windows like OS to rival Microsoft. there are plenty of smart programmers out there that could make some type of Intel based OS that could run Windows apps. and not be bloated.
http://www.geocities.com/baddsectorr
Really, why do people keep bringing this up? I think there are signifcant numbers that users that could benefit from Linux without waiting for the computer-challenged...
Copy paste between operating systems does not happen. This is a big deal.
Our critical app is our accounting software. Yes, I know gnucash is available and free, but has nowhere near the detailed accounting and reporting features that you find in Peachtree and Quickbooks. Our business HAS to have Quickbooks to run smoothly, actually this is probably the one barrier keeping me from switching all these workstations over to linux with KDE desktop, evolution, and open office or staroffice.
I would love to have a system like because I'm a Linux newbie but pretty experienced with Windows. I could have Windows running with Internet access so that I could access the Linux troubleshooting sites and read the how-to's while getting the Linux side of things up to par.
Shh.
1.Because there is no monopoly pushing it.
2.The computer manufacturers don't install it on their new computers.
3.Software makers wont make ports for linux until the OS is installed on new computers.
4.Linux has NO voice.
5.Linux is only used by mainly technical people.
6. Linux has NO advertising. When is the last time you saw a Linux ad except some obtuse IBM ad ? Where are the Apple type attacks on THE MONOPOLY ? Remember like in 83 for the MAC.(dates not accurate)
Why don't you get a life, penguin boy... People keep bringing this up because of the way the story was worded. Assuming that the world will migrate to Linux just because it is now easier to run in tandem with Windows is foolishness. The question was "Will Vanderpool Make Linux More Popular?", and the answer is a resounding NO.
I can now see it happening... someone hacking the windows side of the cpu... overflowing the vmware-like software and rooting my linux box. /me shakes fist at script kiddies!!
Perhaps we are going to be able to go back to multi-user computers. This would actually be a real benefit for many people. An AS/400 for the home, replacing all the boxes with a single central box again. Thin clients with wireless networking around the place. If a virus hits OS Instance 1, bring it down and fix it in the background while work is transferred to OS Instance 2. One user can crash and burn without anyone else knowing or caring. Load sharing means that the heavy and light users can peacefully coexist. And small businesses are going to love it. Life was easier in the 80s when they had a single Unix box and half a dozen dumb terminals. Life is going to be easier again when there's a single big reliable box with all the external connections and massive storage, and a few screens and keyboards around the place. No fun for case modders, but then for those of us who believe computing should be as ubiquitous as plumbing, and as unobtrusive, case modding is deeply sad.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I wonder if it will contain a Vander Pol Oscillator?
"And I wasn't aware that Linus was currently available as a source code distro."
Yes, Celera Genomics has sequenced Linus's DNA, so now you can get the source code to Linus himself!
As a long-time Windows user moving to Linux, I was worried about missing out on the Microsoft eXPerience.
Now it looks as though I can run Linux and STILL expereince the wealth of security breaches, e-mail exploits and various other "features" that Microsoft includes with every new release of Windows.
Thank you, oh, thank you!
This will have interesting implications with Microsofts licensing mechanisms. All the virutal machines *should* look the same, and Microsoft shouldn't really care if I run multiple copies of their workstation version on the same desktop. That way, I can clone the OS, apply the latest patches, see if they work without blue screening the system, and then put that system into "production". Just like how they use VM on mainframes.
Anyways, the only way I can see the ability to run Windows and Linux simultaneously actually making Linux significantly more popular is in the workplace where the admins want to switch everybody over to Linux, but there's that one critical app that only runs on Windows...
Right, and that's a hell of a lot more common than the reverse. And until Linux eclipses Windows in popularity, anything that facilitates running multiple OSes can only help Linux.
Linux has FAR more to gain by being added to a chunk of that percentage than Windows does by being added to the much smaller chunk that doesn't.
...the way an IBM 360 from the sixties could run OSes over VM?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
IBM has been doing multiOS stuff since OS/370 in the 1970's. Their os is called MVS/OS. The advantage allows one to run i.e a linux Production, test and development (and more) kernel
simulataneous such that any one OS crashing doesn't crash the other OS that's running. Sun does this now too. By doing this, it allows one to partition the hardware to act as a cluster of processors in the same box working together (with the same or different OS') or to consolidate servers in the same box or to have each processor and different OS work independently. The OS' can be different versions from the same vendor, different OS' lets say UNIX from different vendors, or totally different OS's such as Linux and Msft XP.
However, one should be careful to create a sandbox such that a DOS attack or virus infection on lets say the MSFT partition doesn't affect Linux running on the other partition and thus diminishing Linuxs' security such that a backdoor is created into the system.
New MP architecture. Cool. Can't have enough of that.
Runs multiple OSes? So what?
Do they really think that any application scenario I need MP for leaves me hanging with the question wether I use Linux, Irix or LoseXP? If I'm gonna get myself a 4 CPU workstation I'm shure as hell *not* gonna waste it buy running Mickeysoft next to Linux or Zeta. No friggin way. If I get myself an MP system it's for reference grade industry strength Ooomph requirements. With me that would be either serious 3D/NLE/Compositing with Software that costs more than the entire hardware or some kind of bizar server requirements I'm dealing with just now, which are barely met with 2 3GHz Xeons, 1,5Gig of RAM and a Rocketdrive with a RAID 'backend'.
Who with more than 2 braincells would waste that with either redundant (MacOS/Linux) or crappy (guess) multiple OSes weighing down on the same system? Me definitely not. The architectures flexibility shure will be handy, but I doubt it will make inroads by running multiple OSes. When it comes to usable MP computing the ball is in the entire *nix half of the field anyway. No friggin way is M$ gonna make it here, new Intel MP 'Vanderbuilt' multi-OS architecture or not.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
For a second I thought this was a person's name. ./ grammar, everything is possible.
Given
Disclaimer: I work for Intel.
Vanderpool is the codename for Intel's hardware virtualization technology. It is independent of and different from Intel's plans to put multiple processor cores on a single die. You do not need Vanderpool technology to have multicore, or vice versa.
I do not speak for Intel. My opinions are not necessarily those of Intel's.
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
I see a hell of a lot more use running SMP Linux on this and taking advantage of the multiple processing units running my Linux apps. The uber-OS could be used to guarantee that the underlying OS stayed uncompromised, thus making Linux yet another order of magnitude more secure than Windows!
The limiting factor in virtualization is that two different VMs cannot get access to the same hardware seamlessly, the drivers just aren't designed that way. You would need your drivers to either be based around a client-server architecture such that one OS ran the server, and a client, and others just ran the client, or to have the hardware support some kind of context switching and locks so that only one OS could get access to the video card at a time, and when you switched between them, the video card would Do The Right Thing(tm). The really shitty thing about virtualization today is that only one VM can have access to each piece of hardware, and in most cases, only the host OS can have access to any piece of hardware, and all others have to emulate. Hence, your VMs cannot do, say, 3d graphics, and if they did (it is not impossible to write drivers for such a purpose) it would be slow and prone to fail.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From March of this year:
Dvorak Thinks Apple Will Switch to Intel
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
I disagree.
.7 - 1.2 S startup-time I get when starting MS Word).
I think IE runs faster and renders more delightful pages then any other browser (even if the code is not w3c standards compliant), but I don't use it. I use Mozilla Firebird because I am just trying to support the project. If I didn't feel like supporting Mozilla, I would gratefully go back to IE - but just out of being nice and trying to make a small difference is the reason I use it (NOT because I think its better, although it has many features that IE lacks).
As for Word - I use it for all my school reports and basically any time I need to spell something without typos. I think Microsoft Word 2002 is great, I can imagine *why* someone would *hate* it. I also like OpenOffice when I am on Linux (I have a doolboot - so please...) because it has practically all the features of MS Word plus more (although I think the start-up time does not even compare with the
Running them together has NEVER EVER gave me problems, I don't know what you are talking about. Maybe you had a virus on your computer or something, or you need to update Windows, or you are using a legacy version. I also cant think of any reasons you would think that IE and MS Word run bad together.
If I could, I would mod you down, you hypocritical person you.
I don't, however, like Microsoft's business practices.
How about Dueling BIOS?
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
I REALLY like the idea. For some time, I've advocated that one of the biggest obstacle to Linux on the Desktop is dual-booting: so you CAN boot Linux, but you WON'T, reverting to Windows at the first glance of an attractive Windows-Only game or a reluctant .doc file.
Now you can get the best of both worlds... suspect this will be of great interest to developpers around the globe: hot-swapping between Half-Life 2 and Gvim to code is something I'm looking forward to!
Lex
1)
... astroturfing is getting really old? How much did you get for this shit of heap?
If you can run multiple OSs then MS is free to come out with a clean and lean new OS and keep XP to run in a compatibility sandbox.
The real reason is certain Distros that frighten users! Text based install? The software of 2001? Kernel 2.2? Politcal flamewars? Grandma's going to scream!
However, some distros actually work. Mandrake 9.2 is practically grandma proof, and the upcoming SuSE 9.0 looks like it will be Joeproof as well! How ever, as long as zealots keeping whoring Distros like Debian, there is going to be FUD spread by trolls for fun and profit!.
Even gentoo is easier to use, I would reccomend it to users with around 1 year of linux experience who want power and bleeding edge. So Debian users, please convince the developers to
If that happens, the zealots can have their cake while joe can eat to! But a debian zealot will probably mod this down.
Hardware solutions are almost invariably faster. If you can natively run two OS's at once, why wouldn't you, compared to running one in hardware and putting a VM wrapper around the other? Whenever you virtualize hardware, you'll lose speed and, to a degree, incompatibility. For a trivial example, try gaming through vmware. As of 3.0, directX wouldn't even run (Win 2K vm in a linux host).
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I think that everyone here is in agreement that we won't use it if m$ develops it -> Unless it's Open Source of course, yeah right!
The chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously.
Nevermind the fact that to pull off such a claim, you would need to duplicate or time-share every other resource in the system, such as video card, sound card, hard disk, motherboard chipset, yadda yadda yadda. It's just so much easier to wave your hands, get people excited, and claim that this new chip can single-handedly cure cancer and leap tall buildings in a single bound...
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
it was posted the other day here.
microsoft has a great oppurtunity here. use linux as a front end to deal with internet interactions. no more patches for microsoft. but how secure is linux really? maybe we will find out.
Without a shared hardware abstraction layer, only one OS could use each hardware device at a time, right? For example, how to share sound card between multiple OS's?
Once you start running GNU/Linux you will have no reason to run Windows. Who would want to run Windows along side Linux ? If a business is going to make the switch to GNU they will not keep Windows around for some legacy apps, they will port them (or get equivalent software) otherwise why switch to Linux?
I can see having diferent divisions run GNU/Linux and Windows, but on the same Machine? IT would not be happy, and you would get NONE of the cash savings.
Now the home user is a different story. the only reason at all for a home user to stay with Windows TODAY are games that they want to play that have not been ported. And for non-gaming home users the only reason is that the computer cam with Windows preinstalled, and a non-geek isnt about to re-install when they *can* do everything they are doing in Windows.
Quite frankly i get vastly more techish questions from poeple who run Windows than those who run Linux (and I am referring to the non-geek people that I have converted to GNU/Linux) - oddly the biggest gripe with GNU/Linux in most reviews is the install and these folks are going to get me to install Windows for them anyway (because they find that frightening), so I install Debian, show them apt-get / apt-cache. and they are perfectly OK.
haha windows running word and internet explorer easily... haha you funny, you make me laugh
'The chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously.'
Not after Uncle Bill makes a few calls to the bios companies.
BC
the only thing that would do is remind me of ye ole DOS days when you had to reboot the computer to get your memory settings set right to play your games.
I know I'm not alone in saying that rebooting is an old, old paradigm that needs to be done away with asap.
now if you're talking about just running the app in a virtual shell of an OS, that would be a nifty idea... ooo!
wait! I'll be right back!
*runs to patent office and runs smack into Jeff Bezos*
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
...two BSODs at the same time if you are running two instances of Windows concurrently.
Oh, and by the way, you will need to buy two Windows licenses to run two copies at the same time on the same machine, thank you.
Isn't this "hyper-OS" the exact same microkernel idea that was popular in the early to mid 90's, with some hardware support on the CPU for performance? The "Next" computers actually had a microkernel, but they had to cheat (break the microkernel/OS separation) to get good performance (I believe). That was early in my career before I became jaded and cynical - I actually believed that by now I would be running multiple OS'es full speed on my one PC. Boy was I naive. Microkernel never really caught on.
That's OK though since Linux is less of a resource hog, I can run Linux on my older PC, Windows (for gaming/video editing/DVD burning) on my newest PC, and use a KVM switch to share my nice monitor/mouse/keyboard. The hardware to share my DSL connection is cheap too, so life is good!
Most of us have more than one PC (or can afford it), so who cares if we can run multiple OS'es simultaneously on one PC?
Most corporate (and individuals) who are interested in moving to Linux have key Windows-based applications that they want to hang on to - at least for a while. Systems like this which allow people to move away from their platform a a massive threat.
Interestingly, MS don't seem to mind customers running Linux under VMware under Windows, it's the other way round that bothers them. If you have a large business (not all of us do), just try telling them them you plan to do this and see how much free software they offer you :-)
Disclaimer: I work for Intel (in an area having nothing whatsoever to do with Vanderpool), but the comments here are my own personal opinion. That said...
y notespeakers.htm#tuesday
I saw a demo of Vanderpool at Intel Developer Forum last month. In the demo, the system with a single processor was simultaneously running some version of Windows playing a media clip (a Simpsons episode) while at the same time on another monitor, another copy of Windows was running and was rebooted in order to update a device driver. The video clip played on.
My take on this (having never heard of it before I saw the IDF demo) was some sort of hardware-assisted VM. It is definitely nothing to do with multicore, as another Intel compatriot noted here.
You can read the transcript of Paul Otellini's Keynote where he presented Vanderpool at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/conf_info/ke
I don't know if there were specific presentations on Vanderpool Technology at IDF - if there were, you'll be able to find them at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/index.htm after November 2.
Oh, you meant dual boot?
Yes, a left and a right
An M$ user account in my home folder, lock it down with the permissions I set. I really like the idea.
Surely this is so that an underlying 'monitor' can control your pc and enforce DRM below the level of the main OS without having a huge performance hit. The ability to run different OS's is nice, but not really the point. Or Maybe intel are just scraping the barrel to come up with something new to combat athlon64 technology.
Vanderpool technology is not tied to a multi-core implementation. It's a set of extensions to x86 that make virtualization easier.
Currently, programs like VMWare need to play some extremely ugly tricks to get virtualization to work due to various issues with x86. This technology will make life easier for those wanting to virtualize the CPU.
So, just to be clear... Vanderpool and multicore are completely orthogonal.
MS can play some dirty tricks too
Some time ago I was installing XP on my box with Debian aready preinstaled on another partition, when, it booted up from the CD, reached HD partition page and: bla bla bla unkown parition detecte, formating, please wait.... all of my assigments, all of my configurations, just gone. I installed debian again, and AGAIN started XP instalation, but it did not occur again... Darn...
Who's Will Vanderpool?
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
No Vanderpool will not make GNU Linux more popular when running with an o/s conducive to virus breeding. Sharing a hard drive with an o/s of this type can only hurt GNU Linux.
Um, the point is that you wouldn't have to reboot, because the OSs are running simultaneously. The effect would be similar to 2 PCs and a KVM switch. Or VmWare or Bochs, only faster.
Litigious bastards
Ibm and Hp don't install linux on their desktop computers they sell.
Would be a MAJOR shift in the market if those two switched sides.
Kinda odd that they support linux for server side but they giveup on the desktop.
Would anyone in the audience be willing to start a GNU version of a virtual machine monitor (VMM)? Writing a VMM only takes tens of thousands of lines of code as opposed to tens of millions of lines for an operating system. The project could be done within a year. Take a cue from the work done on Disco, the VMM developed at Stanford University.
Then, we in the open-source community could feedback to Intel what we want in terms of support for VMM. We could even get help from our uncle, IBM. IBM invented VMs and VMMs back in the 1960s. Unlike Sun Microsystems, IBM has been a strong supporter of the open-source movement and Linux and would surely be willing to help in building a GNU version of VMM.
This is a golden opportunity for the open-source community to impact the future direction of processor development. Is anyone up to the challenge? Would anyone like to accrue the same fame that Linus Torvalds has?
Quickly googled up a link from eWeek:
... providing Apple releases/creates its rumored-but-horribly-unlikely (imo) x86 build of OS X. ... Darwin, which is an OS, just not a very popular one and not much of story. Though AbiWord does run fairly well there with X11 installed. :^)
As Apple Computer Inc. draws up its game plan for the CPUs that will power its future generations of Mac hardware, the company is holding an ace in the hole: a feature-complete version of Mac OS X running atop the x86 architecture.
There have been rumors of the move to x86 for a while. I'm not sure if I buy them -- that's a ton of QA overhead for a potential move down the line, and hopefully the G5 negates any reason for them to move. Not to mention if Apple swapped processors, all the AltiVec-optimized code would be worth creee-ap without having multiple processor *types* in each new, partially x86 powered Mac. And any way you cut it, Apple would still, I'd assume, stick some hardware dongle in there to do what Open Firmware does now: stop cheap generic hardware (or expensive hardware when you talk Pegasos) from running OS X easily. Apple is a hardware company too, you know. Solutions, not just software, etc.
But the point of the article stands, even if the author was overhyping. Anil (the author) really has two outs:
Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system...
1.)
2.)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I assume you like monopoly? Good for you. Most people don't. Just because it's easier doesn't mean it's better.
Now why didn't AMD think of this when they designed the Opteron? If we may believe Chipzilla's timescales, it would have given AMD a two year headstart!
As for implementing it, I'm not an expert on these matters, but I don't think it would have cost a great deal of silicon, as they need to trap only a few extra instructions, a list was once published by Kevin Lawton on the plex86 site, and I've seen it somewhere else (X86-64.ORG?)
Actually, AMD seem to have discussed this when they desigened the Opteron, but guess who seemed to have stopped this? Yes, of course, the beancounters...
You can already do this with x86 chips, as long as you have the right software installed (like VMware). In fact, I think (but I'm not sure) that you can do it without emulating any CPU instructions.
Obviously you'd need some other software to run MacOS, though.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
x86 was a 16 bit architecture, not 8 bit. If you're going to slam on something, helps not to be a moron.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The only question is: how do we get Linux so far as to actually display it?
"Sounds a little like how those big iron mainframes run - virtualized os's playing together managed by hardware to a certain degree.
Seems like another case of technology history repeating itself."
Pretty much the entire personal computer history is "history repeating itself". The word for this is trickle down.
You can buy one today! The current, off-the-shelf version of "Vanderpool" is called a KVM.
Must-not-watch TV!
Every time Intel needs a reason to move chips, they start announcing new features that would take away some of the thunder from Windows. Gates then moves to add these things in software, and creates an instant market for new processors.
Trust me, this feature will be gone by the time this CPU starts fabbing.
Trick is that they can *already* do these things *if* you use Intel chips. Microsoft chooses not to implement such sandboxing for who knows what reason, but the hardware is already ready for this, and has been for quite some time.
Intel can do all sorts of fancy things with their chips, but if no OS utilizes those features, then it's all useless.
This kinda reminds me of the i386 release hype (in 1986) which allowed for "virtual x86 machines" -- DOS programs to be run from within Windows in its own "protected space".
Would anyone in the audience be willing to start a GNU version of a virtual machine monitor (VMM)?
Take a look at Plex86
dinga ding-ding ding-ding ding-ding dinnng....
(dinga ding-ding ding-ding ding-ding dinnng)
I don't need to be reminded of what a Pinto looks like. One OS is fine for me, I don't need Windoze in the background at all. When I initially made the switch a few years ago I promised myself that I would never switch back... and years later I still do not feel the need to use Windows for anything. All my Linux boxes work fine...without Microsoft bogging it down.
-Cnik
Yes, Apple keeps a public port of MacOS X to x86, it's the open Source "Darwin".
There are also reliable reports that Apple keeps a feature-complete implementation of MacOS X on x86 internally. Supposedly ensuring that code compiles and runs succesfully on the MacOS x86 implementation is a formal part of Apple's internal QA testing. Does any of this means that Apple is planning to jump to x86 tomorrow? No, but it means they're keeping their options open, all of their options open.
MacOS X evolved from NextStep (capitalize as you wish) which went through 5 platforms in it's lifetime. MacOS pre X went through it's own migration from 68K to PPC code, Apple pulled it off and doubtless learned a lot, among them thinking ahead pays off and not costs a lot.
Indeed NextStep's aborted descendant Rhapsody was originally targetted for both PP & x86, betas were released for both sides. Apple would be a fool to give up that kind of portability and apparently knows that, uses it to their development advantage.
By testing code on platforms as disparate as x86 booting off of BIOS & PPC using Open Firmware Apple is sure it's wares will run nearly anywhere. Big endian, little endian, should be fine. Has been tested to be fine. No lock-in, no platform-specific dead-ends or migration traps, sanity checked every step of the way.
Will Apple ever release MacOS X x86? Probably not. There's no reason for them to. Apple makes it's money elling hardware, the OS is a means to that end. Besides there'd be a steep marketing cost to adopting x86 after all these years. If anything I'd expect Apple to move to something significantly different, I'd hoped Alpha for a long time but with that dead it's anyone's guess, if anything other then PPC in the forseeable future.
Heck, with Motorola spinning off their chip manufacturing Apple might just buy it and take it all in-house. They're a signifcent Motorola customer, already dedicate a good deal of internal R&D to PPC work, have the cash laying around (US$-something billion cash these days.) It wouldn't be an entirely unreasonable thing for Apple to do, as a division or more likely as an invested-in separate company.
(For all of those folks who argue so vociferously that Apple should go x86 or sell MacOS on it's own or that Apple should become a software co. & not a hardware one: Go tell it to Apple's board don't preach at us here.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
...where you load a wonky Excel sheet, and as well as somehow cruelling Excel completely, you find that Word has gone stupid as well?
Ths is something that I've never seen happen with the OpenOffice.org suite. The worst that loading a dud document will do is freeze OOo, once, and it seems to be able to survive that a lot better than MS-Office (ie, it will gronk on a corrupted doc less often).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is all squirrel food anyway. Stone soup. You're still going to need software to manage stuff like swapping across the display and input devices, and what are you going to do about things like live PPP connections? Share state across OSes? This I gotta buy me a ticket to!
A virtual resource-slicer-thingy (I think IBM call it a "partition manager") would be wedged between the OS and the hardware, Win4Lin style, in which case we've already got several of those. VMWare, UML, and that fabulous new one announced here on Slash, what, three days ago now?
In summary, I'm still looking for the actual news here...?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So, would it be possible to be running one kernel, and build a second one, then start using that one, and kill the old one, then build another one and so on? I wouldn't have to reboot ever right?
You bring up several good points. I don't toally disagree with you either. There's a big difference between failing to correct items that are of obviously poor design, and spending the majority of one's development effort on "usability".
In the case of Linux, some of the items (like arcane commands) probably won't really change. Like it or not, editors like "vi" and commands like "top" (not the most intuitive thing to type to get a process list) probably won't go away. These "standards" have been around far too long, and it's detrimental to the people who've been using Unix systems since the 60's to change or eliminate them.
What can and does happen in the free Unixes (BSD, Linux, etc.) is people simply develop new and hopefully easier to use tools that can optionally be added to the default commands, and made use of at will. The downside of that? Well, only that you're never certain if a given system has those newer commands or not. But as distributions make decisions to keep certain ones in - at least you start to learn when you can expect to find them on a particular installation.
Ultimately though, I have my doubts as to whether an OS "designed by all of us" will ever attain the "ease of use" possible when a single entity does all of the design work. There are so many great advantages to an OS built "by committee" like Linux is, but it isn't the ultimate answer to ALL issues either.
I think Apple proved this when they took BSD and turned it into OS X. In 2 years or so, they built a GUI that's miles ahead of anything we've seen to date for Linux. That's no accident. It's pretty much a case of "too many cooks spoil the soup". When anyone can contribute code to a product, you end up with #1, more choices than you'd care to try to document fully for beginning or even average users, and #2, too many conflicting values coming into play.
A Unix type OS requires a certain level of computer mastery to make good use of it. Does that mean it's destiny is to never be more than "a server OS that only geeks use at home"? Perhaps so. Is that bad? Not necessarily.
I'm sure that for some developers this will be great on the desktop but I'm thinking backroom, server side stuff. A second concurant OS running inside of the same hardware gives some redundancy so that when Server 2003 crashes, you simply switch over to the second instance on the same box and reboot the first instance. Kinda instant recovery for software caused problems.
Or how about using these things in control systems where O/S one can do the real time work and the second one can audit it?
to Windows long before this chip arrives (if it ever does). It's happening already. I use both Windows and Linux... but tend to use Windows more now. The best open source stuff is usually available on both Windows and Linux: GIMP, Oo, Mozilla, Apache, MySQL... for a lot of day to day work, the desktop OS is largely irrelevant. Now if only I could figure out how to get my TV tuner working in Linux...
There are already several open source VMMs, see Xen and plex86.
What makes you think Intel isn't already done designing Vanderpool? If they're not, what makes you think Intel wants/needs feedback from the open source community?
What makes you think someone who writes a VMM could become as famous as Linus? Look how few people use VMware...
VMWare would allow you to use Peachtree and Quickbooks. I use VMWare to run Linux and Windows at the same time. I am currently using Red Hat 9 Linux as my main operating system. If I suddenly decide that I need to run a Windows application I just use VMWare to boot up Windows 2K for me. I then have Windows running in a Window under Linux. I can easily jump back and forth between Windows and Linux in seconds. When I get tired of using Windows I just shut it down and go back to Linux.
There are two versions of VMWare, one uses Windows as the main host operating system, the other version uses Linux as the main host operating system. I have used both and they are both stable. VMWare currently has a few limitations such as no joystick support and no support for playing DVD movies. It is not cheap but it works! I can run up to 4 operating systems at once before I run out of memory. The 4 are Red Hat 9 Linux, Windows 2K, Windows NT 4.0 and PC-DOS 2000.
I mean, MOL runs MacOS 9 or X at the same time as running Linux. Why can't PCs do something similar?
Which half? I've had 100% success so far this year, even when one hardware supplier broke his Excel-XP spreadsheet and couldn't reload either it or the generated price-list, but my oocalc could and did (he ended up reverting two weeks and was annoyed when he found out that he could have just installed OOo - but he's not very quick on the uptake because he still hasn't installed it).
Five seconds. And it's not as if it needs regular closing like MS-Office does - is it?
An alternative way of looking it it is that even granted twenty seconds (-: hah! you're history! :-), that's less time than it takes to reboot MS-Windows after MS-Office guts the entire system - isn't it?
Now, shall I misquote The Offspring? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Tech support people, except for terminally thick and insecure ones, really like my calls. I should record some, they don't often get to laugh, except when a customer does something really funny like formatting their hard drive or (this really happened) propping a third-storey sliding window open with their monitor, then then bumping it as they opened the window to remove it again, with very grave - or at least gravitic - results.
I'll see your two gronks and raise you a drongo! Er... too late? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
No. Is this a trick question?
I use vmware, you insensitive clod!
:b
Oh wait, I don't matter. Sorry.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
My boss will put 5 or 6 employees on a PC.
----- Sorry for poor english, I usually speak Klingon -----
All the good stuff is on Windows! Cry of the lamer.
The first spreadsheet was called SuperCalc or something (I could be wrong here, it's roughly two decades ago), and ran on an Apple II (OK, ][ to be pedantic ;-). The Mac merely inherited the principles. And I'm not sure you'd call this CLI - it's a text interface but has more lines than the term CLI suggests (at least to me ;-). ;-).
As for GUI use - yes, we're wasting heaps of cycles on animated cursors, but even X is pretty hideous if an outfit like QNX can stick a windowed environment, a dialer or network stack and a browser on ONE floppy. I'm always amazed at MS Word disappearing off for seconds on a 2GHz processor. So I'm amazed pretty often
=C=
Insert
I have no need to use M$ products.
And I would lay money on it that M$ ends up being the "hyper-os" and that being the case, I have no use for the hardware.
Resistance is NOT futile.