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Review Of Serenity Virtual Station
JigSaw writes "Here's some serious competition for VMWare and Virtual PC: OSNews reviews a new OS emulator, the Serenity Virtual Station, which can run as a host on FreeBSD, Linux and OS/2 and supports as guests a slew of OSes. It is based on the twoOStwo virtual operating engine (which additonally runs on top of Windows as well)."
I don't mean to offend but I'm not going to consider it serious competition until it's managed a few months/years of actual use, as opposed to being merely a beta product that isn't even out for the public yet.
It's pretty surprizing since doesn't VMware hold several patents on running virtual guest operating systems like Uniden holds a crap load of patents on how to listen on different frequencies? I know bad example, but I couldn't think of anything else at the moment. ;)
This space is not for rent.
Is it fast?
Can't we strip down the "OS" to just this kind of layer that centralizes access to the unique local hardware and process space? Then the "hosted" OS'es can just be commonly installed apps and libraries. We can carve them up to reduce redundancy. Signed APIs for IPC ACLs would complete this picture. It would remove many of the limits to scaling a processor off a single machine, to any available network resources. And the open source OS'es would be more fit to reproduce in this environment.
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"
- WB Yeats, "Things Fall Apart"
--
make install -not war
Actually, if you want to run virtual machines, the way to go might be the AMD 64-bit machines, which supposedly have the proper hardware support virtual IA-32 machines. Has anybody tried that yet?
It's called a "running joke." Slashdot has quite a few of them. Some of the most popular are the "IN SOVIET RUSSIA..." and "But does it run Linux?" Even if the article was about a Linux Powered Linux Machine Used By Linux, someone would probably ask "But does it run Linux?" So, in conclusion, I think you lack a sense of humor.
Minor but significant difference.
Mac on Linux. you'd have to run LinuxPPC, then you can run a Mac OS (Or another PPC based OS for that matter) in that. http://www.maconlinux.org/
I've been meaning to toy with it for some time, maybe now that I have a new iBook I'll try it on my old iMac.
People stay on Windows because:
.NET or Cocoa), and so forth. Personally, I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release of Y-Windows.
- It's easy to use (before someone chimes in with their anecdotal "this happened to me once" situation, yes, for the majority of people Windows is very easy to use)
- Easy to download and install drivers.
- As a result, easy to go down to Wal-mart and buy a new printer and have it work in less than a minute.
- Endless software, including lots of freeware. There's more software for Windows because Windows is easier to develop for, with no endless list of competing, inconsistent toolkits that exist simply to reinvent the wheel yet again and introduce another "choice"
- Old software still works. I can run my Windows 3.1 programs in XP if I wanted to. Linux distros are still a bit of a moving target. I can't guarantee an RPM I got five years ago will still work, can I? Meanwhile, I can run a Windows app from 10 years ago with no problems.
If you honestly think the reason that 95% of the marketshare is using Windows is simply because of Photoshop, you're deluded. OS X has Photoshop as well, but look at its share compared to Windows.
Note that despite all this, Linux can catch up and defeat Windows. But it has to abandon XFree86, implement things like binary installation/uninstallation APIs, one sane toolkit that is a joy to program for (i.e., like
the i386 aarchitecture is an inheriently non-virtulaizable architecture. The reason for this is the presence of 17 non privileged sensitive instructions. VMware has to modify binary code before executing i386 binaries natively in a VM. Even in that case, we arent really sure what it is they do since it is closed source.
I would be very very careful with VMs for i386 unless of course i knew exaclty how it was handling those 17 instructions. Just becasue it can run programs does not mean that it is a proper VM or even that it is a secure VM.
There is a chance you can mess up your machine with theset things.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
One irritating thing about VMWare Workstation is that it's only officially supported with a few very specific kernel versions with standard configurations. In my experience, sometimes it's a problem, sometimes it's not. Serenity reportedly supports all 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels.
On another note, VMware released several versions of their software before they finally included such important features as USB support. Even though it's still unclear whether such features will make it into the first official release of Serenity, one wonders how soon an open source project of this magnitude will be able to match VMware Workstation 4.x's performance and core feature set--especially considering that Serenity's supported OS's already rival VMware's.
If Serenity is more responsive in windowed mode than VMware Workstation, then that's already a big plus.
Actually I think it is the Microsoft competition, now retailing at $129. I believe the majority of VMWare workstation sales are on Windows.
Microsoft will be coming out with Virtual Server soon.
VMWare did do one smart thing. They donated free licenses to many open source projects (such as Samba). That ensured that those talented developers didn't contribute their time to the open source projects due to having something that works for them.
STEVEs want an open road, the Mustang GT390 of hardware and the Jacqueline Bisset of algorithms... and, er, hardware.
STOUs want to "send a picture" and "read mail".
A STOU doesn't really buy much software. A STOU doesn't even buy the OS: it comes with the "mail reader" or "picture scanner", or they get it for free from someone. A STOU doesn't care about the implications of anything he needs to do his task. (SUVs are for STOUs.)
In the 90s, MonopoSoft was happy to let piracy go on because it captured STOUshare for them. MonospoSoft understands the economic importance of STOUshare. The first version of M-Windows for which MonopoSoft has seriously tried to control piracy is XP.
It's just much easier for everyone in the retail food-chain to steer and market to STOUs. Why have a variety of foods when this bag of chips -- the brand your neighbours are eating! -- will do just fine. Oh, by the way, you can't eat anything else.
Linux, the STEVE OS, has done most of the catching up that it can with STEVEs. In nations with low per-capita income and a mistrust of the US and MonopoSoft, Linux will probably gain STOUshare.Until STOUs can talk about Linux without having to know what they are talking about, Linux will not gain STOUshare.
Until STOUs can call a Help Desk and talk to more STOUs about problems neither of them understands, Linux will not gain STOUshare.
Until Linux can do MORE than M-Windows can while supporting all that M-Windows supports and working flawlessly with everything that MonopoSoft controls, Linux can't direct where the market goes and cannot gain STOUshare in North America.
The outlook is bleak. But there is a trump card: any OS that makes Jacqueline Bisset want you is so STEVE that even all the STOUs will fight for it.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.