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Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Removes Linux Support
Psykechan writes "MSFN has got themselves a beta of the new MS Virtual PC 2004 which should be out at the end of this year. Most notable in their 'fixes' is the removal of Linux, BSD, Netware, and Solaris from the supported OS list. They may still work, they just aren't supported. We all thought that this would happen after MS bought Connectix but this just makes it official."
Why worry... I'm quite happy with VMWare's Linux performance
Why bother buying it at all then? if you really can only really test Microsoft OSes with it now then I can't see that being of much use to anyone.
I'm sure if they do still work, it won't last, they'll soon end up on the "doesn't work, so don't try" list. And any attempts to fix it on the linux end, will result in many changes to the vpc to make them all annoying futile.
but I am in a captain obvious moment right now.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Emulation or virtualization is useful to kernel developers. It lets them test changes to a kernel without having to send it to a second machine all the time.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe someone could inform Kollar-Kotelly or whats-her-name? To me this is a clear case of a monopolist buying a company and killing support for alternate products.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
They need it to support older versions of Windows. Easier to create an emulation layer than to maintain backwards compatibility.
Or maybe they just wanted to kill a nice migration tool. Why would they do that?
Microsoft's concept of "choice" is like the "managed democracy" of Putin's Russia.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Just like Sony with the Virtual Game Station & Bleem! Cast. Sony sued the bejesus out of Bleem and Connectix. Connectix won and the Bleem ran out of funds. M$ decided to cut straight to the chase. Lets not forget what happened to Bungi after it's acquisition by M$, the games already in production got behind, especial on the ports, and nothing big has happened since then.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Call as much as you like. The Bush administration doesn't listen to you unless you have thousands of dollars to give and the title of "CEO" after your name.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Let's think about this for a moment.
It's obvious the MS has started treating Linux as a serious competitor. For most people, Linux doesn't offer everything you need... there's a great deal of commercial content-creation software that only exists for windows or mac, that Linux cannot now, and probably will not for a long time, be able to touch.
So here's a product, that allows your customers to go ahead and run the competitor's software too, and all without you losing a cent in OS or Software revenue... Why not let it continue to work?
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
On a more serious note, I bet this'll get rid of the few people who still think MS is holding up its fair share of the interoperability departments.
I wonder if anyone will bother to bring this to the attention of the Supreme Court. They, apparently, don't care about monopoly practices unless someone with money tells them that its happening.
I wonder how this might affect their current stock issue?
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Are the guys at MS indirectly saying that Windows is not stable?
No, like the guys at Apple, they're saying OS X is more stable than Mac OS (9 and lower).
VPC never supported anything other than FAT16 or FAT32 anyway. If you want to use NT you have to use Disk Manager to set up the disk image yourself, too.
As to the poster above me, what about the summary? The parent poster is quite right; you just select "Other" as the OS. So you won't get support from Microsoft if you want to run Linux on VPC. Big deal; VPC emulates all very well known and supported hardware anyway.
I do. I use the PC version to run Solaris x86 and various Linux installs. I actually don't have a Windows install under Virtual PC at the moment, though I have used them in the past.
For example, I'm currently experimenting with a migration from Cobalt's Linux (killed by Sun) to Debian. I'm doing this by getting a base install of Debian ready under VPC, then making a copy to try out all the settings. If I go wrong, scrap the copy and start with a fresh one.
I'll bet it will still work, but 'unsupported' worries me. Are they moving the software towards a virtualisation package ala VMWare, or are they maintaining a true emulator which is what Virtual PC always was? There is a difference, and if they don't come out and tell me (hiding behind all the 'unsupported' nonsense) then I'll never know.
Cheers,
Ian
The biggest question--I'm assuming that VPC still sells better to Mac users than Win users, anybody know?--is whether VPC 2004 will run on G5s. These screenshots are apparently of a VPC for Win build.
I'm guessing no--VPC for the G5 is apparently going to be a huge undertaking. It remains to be seen if MSFT is willing to do it at all.
Do people really buy this for Win? Why on earth? If you have XP would you want to install a virtual 2000 or 98? Maybe for development reasons? Maybe for Linux--but now even that is deprecated. What's MSFT's strategy for VPC? Could it be that they just wanted to make it that much harder for Mac users to interoperate, or is that simply tin-foil hat reasoning?
--
$tar -xvf
Ok, so they removed Linux support from the Virtual PC software. Well why on earth should I care? - For one thing, as other comments have pointed out, there are other products in this field anyway, and for another, on just about any PC that I could run Linux through a virtualisation layer such as this, I could run Linux natively, surely? I mean, dual booting is possible on Wintel boxes, and I've never had that much to do with Macs but I've always been under the impression you could do the same with anything from the Power Mac onwards.
Plus On almost any hardware I have ever tried it on, running Linux through any kind of virtualisation layer has sucked anyway. So enlighten me. Do I have the wrong idea as to what Virtual PC does, or is there just some compelling reason to run Linux through it that I was not aware of?
--Soluzar
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
MS tried to buy VMware and did not succeed. They intended to halt support for Vmware on linux. Instead they bought Connectix and plan to bundle "virtual PC" capability into Windows server in order to kill off the VMware market. Flat out, too many folks are consolodating wintel servers into VMware sessions running on top of Linux and MS does not like it.
The first thing we noticed was the removal of Linux, BSD, Netware and Solaris from the Guest Operating System Wizard list, which was bound to happen to Virtual PC in the hands of Microsoft.
Then let me know how it works..
It doesnt of course..
For those with a Mac it *is* a big deal. Unless all you want to run is VMwindows.
But this is not suprising nor unacceptable, what is in it for Microsoft to support the competition? Nothing.....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And it seems everyone will be able to get it for a small fee. MSDN free of charge.t icleID/40618/4 0618.html
s px
See
http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/Ar
There is longhornblogs.com site where some guys from MS are doing some weird stuff: they are actually acting nice, asking everyone to be as hard on them as possible, so they can make a better product.
See blog titled "How to hate Microsoft" written by one of their employees.
http://longhornblogs.com/scobleizer/posts/345.a
Giving pre-beta1 out for all to see, 2 or 3 years before release is very unusual for MS. Part of it is probably to show that they are working on something, to slow Apple and Linux advances. But, it seems that Longhorn brings so many news, and they want to make sure hordes of their loyal developers will follow. Of course, there is a huge amount of new API's (Avalon, XAML, Indigo), and they will probably try to rocket the adoption of new OS by having developers write for new, Longhorn only API's. And there is a lot "security, managed" talk too.
On topic, I suspect they will use Virtual PC like a layer to easily run untrusted apps, and still have a "trustworthy" machine.
It is all getting very serious; flashy look (3D+new rendering engine+scripting of those through XML API called XAML, just to keep their developers busy, and Miguel will have some work to do too) and "security" features will be there to blind their developers and customers, while sneaking a really new meaning of proprietary: DRM.
MS is for some reason frightened like hell; building this kind of communities, with showing alpha software is, well, kind of OSS-ish. Nice to see recognition of one metodology. They are trying to improve their public picture like mad. MS guys there are so nice it is sickening. Of course they wont fix really important things, like opening to standards, but they will sure try to prove that the care about customers. It seems Longhorn is "make it or break it" for them. So, let's break the damn thing, or we will be sorry for the rest of out lives.
"I am now going to Pirate VPC and do my best to make sure pirated copies of VPC show up on as many forums and distribution points as I can find."
That is exactly what M$ wants people to do. They would rather have you pirate their software than pay for or even use freely the software of a competitor.
With Windows legendary vulnerability, instability and mysterious performance anomalies, I wouldn't want to run Linux on top of that house of sand for anything but a trivial application.
Perhaps in the long run, Microsoft is doing Linux a favour.
My office uses VM Ware right now as a testing environment so we can try multiple versions of windows with our software. Still, there's obvious demand for a product that runs Linux and windows side by side, so it is clear here that Linux support is being removed because it's Microsoft.
Expect MS to bundle this into their dev studio to try to lock out VMWare and further reduce the ways to run Linux.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
it allows Mac OS users to run Windows applications? What other application does that (reliably)?
When Windows applications are themselves reliable, we can fault the maker of emulators and hardware for problems. When the hardware maker is bought by M$, it will soon be junk.
I'm sure the previous poster considered the dearth of x86 hardware for Mac. He seems to think that x86 hardware for Mac is more useful for running Linux, BSD and other free software than it is for running M$ junk.
What this means is that Microsoft is moving to put in barbs to mess with anything but Windoze. That these barbs will mess windoze too is not their concern because Microsoft cares even less about Mac users than they care about their own users. They have always done this kind of thing and they always will. The next challenge is the Next Generation Security BIOS which will lock everything but M$ out of commodity hardware. If it's not under M$ control, it won't make money for M$ and M$ can't tollerate that. Wierd, screwed up, agressive and paranoid but true, M$ has and continues to repeate their desire to run everyone's computer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"If you want it so badly why don't you write a "contender"? I hate it when people complain about open source / free software but they don't do jack to help out the movement..."
That's a stupid statement. I wish people would stop using it.
Just because you are hungry or have an exquisite palate does not make you a good cook/chef.
There's already tons of crap code out there (BIND, sendmail etc).
Where people could help is with money. Even if they can't code, they may have other valuable skills and earn money with them. They can use that money to encourage people with the relevant coding skills to code.
There are many many other ways to help too.
I'm a Mac user, and I just became a Microsoft enemy.
Yep, why don't we all jump in bed with a company that controls hardware, operating system, and application layers. What a great way to stick it to the Microsoft, where you can, for example just own an MS Windows system, purchase all your hardware from Dell, and have OpenOffice and Mozilla run on application levels.
And you can format the drive any time and run Linux on it, or if you change your mind, switch back to Windows.
No, because that would be MS achnowledging that there's something out there besides Windows for PC, which most people currently are unaware of. Windows == PC already.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
MS bought VPC is so they can stop developing native Mac applications.
Want the latest version of Office for the Mac? Get the VPC/XP/Office bundle.
I seriously doubt there will be another native version of Office for OSX. MS has aready showed they want to tie Office to Server 2003 and it will rely on too many technologies that are Windows only.
Also, I'm pretty sure that beta is of VPC for Windows not VPC for the Mac.
VPC for Windows, I never really did get that.
Well this stinks. My preference would have been to run Linux UNDER XP inside a virtual machine on my laptop since there are still some things like games which run "better" (read, "only") under Windows. I guess I'll have to wipe the drive now and install Linux directly. Good move Micro$oft! You have, in fact, forced me to abandon one of my two preferred OS's.
calm down people!
You can download the trial from microsoft, and it still has options for running all the fun stuff (AKA linux, solaris, BSD). So they pulled the support. Big deal! The whole net is our support!
Look, any simulated X86 architecture that runs windows will by default run linux.
It's what we've been doing all along, right?
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
When Microsoft dropped their participation in the joint IBM-MS OS/2 project, they didn't just stop developing for OS/2, they killed all of their OS/2 products, ripped out existing support for OS/2 from all of their development tools, made gratuitous changes to Windows 3.1 to break Win-OS/2, and started using DOS extenders that were fundamentally incompatible with OS/2.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Their Win4Lin product lets you run Windows on top of Linux at near-native speed, and supports pretty much everything out of the box except for DirectX games (which itself is a major reason to run Microsoft OSs).
If Microsoft would buy them, then there'd be one less company that lets Linux and Windows coexist, thereby enlarging the OS chasm, which is what I guess they're after, besides the meta-issue of world domination of course.
(... and now to go get me some o' that Netraverse stock ...)
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Well, then contribute something, don't just whine about it like the first guy was doing. If you have money to contribute; give it. If you are good at writing documentation; write it. If you are good at coding; help code. Just don't sit around and curse about how everything sucks and tell the developers that do contribute time and effort that they are worthless. If you're hungry and you like to eat, you CAN become a good chef if you give it a shot.
Whyever bring Putin into this? If you want to make snide remarks about democracy, just look into Bush+Florida+Election+Fraud.
have different rules.
Removing support for different OS's is anti-competitive. You'll recall that MS is under order to allow for different browser installs?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Why is Microsoft evil for not specifically coding support for other OSes in VPC? I can understand the outrage if Microsoft specifically coded routines in VPC that would specifically target non-MS OSes and prevent them from running. But from what we know, this is not happening (yet). All they did was cut back on some features while improving others. As long as Microsoft is not actively and purposefully putting road blocks in VPC to prevent execution of non-Microsoft OSes, then what have they done that is illegal?
Microsoft should not be allowed to purposefully interfere with competitor's products, but they should not be forced to purposefully support said products.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
MS is constantly saying that Windows is not stable. They call every current-minus-one release the worst POS on the planet when they come out with the current release.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
bochs, plex86, xen.
All need developers
Its a great project and its a lot of work, but isnt 'quite there', yet...
While I agree with it not being quite "their" yet, understand the slow part is becasue its meant to be a real honest to goodness emulator. This means that no instructions run natively. So I don't see it getting any faster. Thank ${DIETY} for Moores law. Now their is perhaps the possbility of speed improvements, and they would be helpful, but remember that the bochs people are more concerned with being able to intercept singnals and pass them to GDB than speed.
I will grant though that graphic support is real lacking. Last I tried the VNC screen output didnt work on freebsd.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.