Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Support Linux in Virtual Server
zaxios writes "Techworld is reporting that Microsoft has announced support for running Linux on their virtualization software, Virtual Server 2005. From the article: '[Microsoft] can't compete against VMware without support for other operating systems.' Perhaps the significance of this is that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as an OS people might want to use, which seems an upgrade from its previous status as a communist cancer."
Enjoyed my fun little christmas hoax - help me do it for real in 2005! ;-)
which seems an upgrade from its previous status as a communist cancer
This was said five and four years ago (respectively). Sheesh - you know companies can change mindsets....Even a stone can change with time.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
They have killed all of linux.slashdot.org!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
In the post-Microsoft world I welcome our communist Linux overlords.
Microsoft is supporting communism AND cancer!? Well I knew they were evil but this is definitely a new low. For shame, Microsoft, for shame.
Does this mean I can finally run Linux under Wine?
Or Microsoft wants to be able to go "hey why switch to Linux, you can do the same thing on Windows, whats up with you silly commie?"
I like muppets.
But until the VM host runs in linux, they cannot compete with VMWare. Why would I want to trust multiple VM machines running on a windows VM host. In fact our Windows VM's are more stable on VMWare then they are as regular machines.
make them run in a virtual server...
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
...does it run Linux?
it means you can run Wine on Windows.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Seems we are starting to get to the fourth stage.
Especially with Linux use as a server platform keeps growing in leaps and bounds.
I noticed (yes I RTFA) that they are also going to license their virtual disk format royalty free.
They have a bit of a hard road to climb it they want to compete with VMWare, but Microsoft certainly has the muscle to do so.
In the end, it doesn't matter if its running Mac OSX, Solaris, FreeBSD or Linux -- it still requires a Microsoft product, no? Why didn't they think of this before? "Oh, no, don't switch... just buy this!"
They have made a wrapper for linux to work with microsoft :P
One step closer...
It means you can mess with stuff without coughing up for hardware first so you can see if it is compatibile in your environment, etc.
The product referred to in the article is the formerly Connectix VirtualPC, originally a Mac product for running Windows under the MacOS. Then Connectix added support for Linux, so the ability to run Linux inside a VirtualPC isn't really new, and Microsoft didn't have to write any code to do this. Of course, I don't understand what all the fuss is about when a Free and Open Source product called QEMU does pretty much everything VirtualPC does and it actually runs under Linux (and others), as well as supports a whole bunch of guest OS's.
You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department is so large that it is almost like a company within its self. So if it is bad for the Windows Server team that the Virtual Server team has done this, well too bad. The Virtual Server team needs to keep their product competitive and they are just telling it as it is; they are an x86 system virtualizer and need to support popular x86 platforms, if they didn't then they deserve to die off.
This is no different than when Microsoft released an Office for Mac. Naturally the Windows platform teams and managers didn't much care for that but Office saw it as an opportunity. The people doing the name calling are the ones within Microsoft that are competing against Linux not the ones that couldn't care less either way or want to port their projects to Linux to improve their customer base.
In my opinion, when we see a dominant Linux platform (e.g. desktop environment, tool set etc) then we will also see a copy of Microsoft Office released. Microsoft will follow the market with most of its products.
Seriously, every time MS dumps on Linux, there's a story. Ever time MS acknowledges Linux, there's a story. What's the point? Linux is competition for MS, so they are going to dump on it every chance they get, and they are also going to acknowledge it from time to time. Aren't there better things to be reporting on? I realize that this is Slashdot, but come on, it's getting old.
You could run other a Linux opsys but it was not supported. This is to level the field with VMware and nothing more. Of course this is good for those supporting Unix/Linux installs on our windows desktops. This merely acknowledges what has been going on forever. Windows rules the average desktop. Unix (and now Linux) rules the average server room. This is they way things have been for years and years and I don't expect many changes. This is not the sign of an impending move for Linux in the desktop space. Sorry, zealots. Be happy Linux will rule the server room, but don't hold your breath for the desktop revolution.
...if Linux'll run.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Originally submitted without MS bashing as:
Hell Freezes Over-Thursday April 21, @08:37AM -Rejected
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Why again would you pay for an OS only to run a free one that can run on it's own accord on the same hardware?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Maybe they are planning to rewrite Windows and need an emulation layer in the future to support all the old apps
I wonder who will be the first one to run:
- Linux Running VMware running...
- Windows Running VirtualServer2005 running...
- Linux Running WMware running...
You get the idea..What he means is that virtualization will become a mission-critical function within the enterprise allowing customers to leverage their investments in legacy systems while enabling information technology staff to expand development using innovative technologies. MS is striving to develop best of breed technologies to provide its cusomers better TCO and ROI when compared with competing products.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Sun came out with a PCi card that allowed people to run Windows NT in an X-server application window, primarily for CAD users who wanted to read Windows E-mail.
And of course, there is Wine which allows Windows application to run on Linux.
So Microsoft are going to have to compete somehow.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I ownder if this tactic won't completely backfire on Microsoft.
Ballmer is hoping that people will realise the value of Microsoft products because they give advanced interoperability with Linux and other OSes.
What may end up happing is that people will realise the value of Linux and wonder why they need to spend money and wasted CPU resources running Windows in the first place.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
you inspire me.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"I don't see the value proposition in Linux" is the kind of mindset likely to change within five years.
Asserting that the GPL is cancerous and free software advocates are communists is not.
The simple truth is, Microsoft (or, at least, Bill Gates) likely never truly believed either of those things. They said them because they thought that if people believed it, it would confer a business advantage for them. For another example of this kind of behavior, I refer you towards Bill's obvious flip-floppery on the issue of software patents.
link to the transcript from MS
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/200This is virtually non-sensical to me. Can anybody explain this to me in English?
With more powerful server hardware, even in the "WinTel" arena, it's possible to coalesce a number of previously disparate servers onto one box, reducing the total cost of ownership. This is especially true for fragile we-have-no-clue-how-to-migrate-it legacy apps running on old hardware and software - there are migration tools that will virtualize the server, exactly as it is, so it's running as a process on a spanky new box.
Of course this is much ado about nothing - Virtual Server and Virtual PC both support Linux just fine. They just don't officially support Linux (so instead of picking Linux as the OS, I have to pick "other").
I'll give it a shot.
"We'll support non-Windows virtual machines running on our Virtual Server, including Linux. Virtualization am much good. Make much money sense to Bizarro."
For all of you out there who love the stability of linux, running under the instability of a host windows operating system.
I don't see this functionality as likely to be used anywhere but the desktop (e.g. developers/etc. who want more than cygwin offers), which afaik isn't remotely their target for this?
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
virtual support on virtual server!!
hummm........
I booted Linux under Virtual PC a while back.
All they are doing here is adding it as a supported functionality. Not that that doesn't count for something.
Now if we could just boot Windows virtual machine from a Linux host with near native performence, then you'd really haev a break through.
Now that Microsoft has given the thumbs up to Linux on Virtual PC, I can slaughter one of the big objections people have to moving web servers off Windows: the developers don't have a Linux box on their desktop. Now they can install Virtual PC and set up a test environment there, which kills the problem and might get some Windows web servers off the net.
Not that I have a problem with Windows, but it makes a really *bad* web server.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
My guess is that Microsoft will make sure that Linux works, sort of, but not quite right, or only specially modified versions will work. They will want everyone to see that Windows works better of course. So I don't imagine many people will end up actually using such a combination for Linux.
Nice. Much better than Ipsum Lorem.
Linux is... a cancer. And we... are the cure.
Windows runs in an emulation layer already, on top of the NT kernel. They did that so that they could also emulate POSIX and OS/2. Have a look at (for example) this.
The only thing is, there are no new POSIX apps. Only old Windows ones.
Why would anyone run Linux under windows? Apart from the performance degradation, you still have all the security/bloat/performance issues of having an MS OS somewhere in the loop.
Also its probably too good an opportunity for Microsoft not to miss to engineer their virtualisation software to make Linux appear to perform worse/less stably than Windows.
It is all about running them at the same time. I dual boot. 99.9% ( I made that up ) I run Linux and just access my files under it. The other 0.1% ( time my wife lets me play games *grin*) I run windows.
It would be nice to run both at the same time. Question is which one do you want to be the guest, and how much overhead do you pay to run one under the virtual server. Maybe it makes sense, for some people, to run the bloated Windows natively... and run the leaner Linux on the virtual machine.
Questions is, do you get the "Best" or "Worst" of "Both Worlds".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If they are really going to compete with VMware , then it will have to work, and solid. This might be a catch 22 for MS though. It might cause migration of already existing users over to the Linux side of the fence. Then again it might not. End users arent going to be sitting in front of a VM, most likely a developer or sysadmin doing so, and most of those realize the validity of Linux, or so I feel anyway. Will this mean more cross over for our Community, probably not.
If your going to convert the world, have to get to the end user, not the admin.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
is not the same as "announced suppot".
Nevertheless, MS has cleverly played the...
With MS you can run LInux but with LInux you can't run MS card...
How to read this from a business POV?
Interesting. Your "TFA" points to a story at Mithuro about China and Taiwan, while your quote includes many important PageRank keywords like Windows, Ballmer, virtual, Linux and technology.
Nice try at boosting your Google Rank. I'm not buying it.
emulate Linux in a virtual PC to bypass the GPL.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Given Microsofts history of underhanded sabotage against competetion it would take a large leap of faith to trust any software of theirs to run another O.S. honestly. At the very least there will be some windows specific 'feature' that the virtualisation software requires to get maximum performance.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
Microsoft admits that linux is going to obliterate windows.
Microsoft can not continue its current business model of assimilating applications into the operating system because the GPL would require complete opening and free distribution of MS source code whenever MS interfaced its code with GPL code. This would kill the current assimilation model.
Microsoft is vainly attempting to position itself to sit as a layer between the hardware and linux; and by doing so hopes to create a market place.
By doing this Microsoft is allowing linux to behave in a very similar fashion to Java and its VM.
The MS OS department is old and slowly breathing its last breaths. Its xbox offspring, however, is bouncing ahead!
Does it go on forever?
(from Webster online)
Etymology: French, from saboter to clatter with sabots, botch, sabotage, from sabot
This affair reminds me of the DR-DOS and Windows 3.1. All M$ has to do is to "support it" and quietly make sure what "support" they provide is broken in some strange way, and place the blame on Linux to [I]sabotage[/I] its adaptation. This way at a later date they can make the claim "users have made their choice. Linux is out."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
MS denied Linux as being useable right up to the point they figured out they could make money from it, while leveraging their brand as the primary. It's a thin tightrope, and I expect them to fall a few times, but this is just the path they're FORCED to take due to the freedom that FOSS allows users. bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
Virtual PC has supported Linux as a guest for ages already, long before Microsoft bought them out. What would be more interesting is if they brought back support for OS/2 as a host OS, a feature which they immediately removed after buying the company out. Of course I'd expect nothing else from Microsoft, but oh well, maybe Microsoft still feels threatened by OS/2?
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Wouldn't running Linux on top of Windows be kind of like stacking bricks on jello?
hack a day
Now I can run an emulator to run windows under linux under windows under linux under windows...
yet another indication of the dreaded slashdotting of the universe
for christ sake go and recompile your Kernel or something....
For those of us with large datacenters and limited resources, Virtual Server is great for throwing something in the mix and seeing what sort of integration we get.
https://www.virtualondemand.com
"Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as an OS people might want to use"
Linux is a kernel, not an OS.
continue.
It also exposes the virtualized Linux sessions to the full power of Microsoft's partners, the malware vendors.
This is like the Sith saying, "We can do everything you can do, but now tremble before the power of the Dark Side!"
Intel, AMD, and IBM are all contributing to the Open-Source project Xen, which should support hardware virtualization as soon as it's available, and will no longer require re-compiling the kernel. In short, open-source VMWare will be here to stay. Microsoft HAD to respond in some way. Whether they can parlay this into another Netscape vs. MSIE and actually come out on top (for a while) is yet to be seen. Either way, it's awesome to see Microsoft being forced to give at least a tiny bit of their market to linux.
MS and Linux interoperability as a result of efforts on MS's part? That's unnatural.
I can foresee that this will cause every Linux system to experience a "Kernel Panic" as a matter of principle, not because of anything buggy in the software (although I'm not saying that MS will produce anything bug-free).
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Windows inside Linux inside Windows inside MacOSX.
So instead of one cross-platform standards-based language embodying write-one-run-anywhere, we do it the long way around.
Yeah, this is a really great idea. "Our new PCs from Dell can run six different operating systems inside each other right out of the box. We call it the Mental Whiplash System."
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
A beowulf cluster of these...
Would you need a cart full of tubes to run around in the cluster to keep fixing BSOD'd?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I've been browsing at -1 and half of the stuff that's been modded down is either funny and not a troll or a valid point and not flamebait. People need to meta-moderate more often to get rid of some of these losers.
1)M$ gives up on Longhorn, has a BarBQue, adopts Linux and moves all its goodies over onto it.
2) M$ gets a solid OS base.
3) Linux gets a decent desktop. (Okay its no Mac but still.)
4) $$$
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...and applies a little KY jelly to their butthole for Linux to slide in easier.
This is virtually non-sensical to me. Can anybody explain this to me in English?
You're right. Virtualization in this context is meaningless, or their specific claim is meaningless. The effort to virtualize an entire computer means you can theoretically run any O/S on it that you want, even another copy of windows.
What makes this statement so unique to me is that microsoft is using the interest and popularity of linux to cash in on their virtual server and to announce to the world "HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT US, WE PLAY NICE, OUR VIRTUAL SERVER SUPPORTS OUR GREATEST RIVAL LINUX".
It's like an oil company saying, "Hey, we've improved out gasoline formula. It provides better power, smoother operation, cleans the engine, AND EVEN RUNS ON HYBRID CARS". Of course, I'm with you and see this as nothing but a huge steaming pile of bovine excrement that came from microsofts P.R. department.
If they had left out the ",including linux" part, then their article would have been another, well it's about time moment. But those two extra words to me makes them look like bufoons finding a new and unique way of trying to appeal to the technically ignorant and push their latest product on them.
It's kinda like a drug dealer finding a new way to push their latest form of heroin on a junkie.
At first, i misread the title (not to mention TFA) and thought of a server platform that, when under excessive load, infects unsuspecting insecure Windows clients and offloads part of the work to them. Maybe the successor of the 'client-server' and 'n-tier' models turns out to be the 'do it yourself, slacker' model...
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
are they done fighting yet?
Longhorn's late. Yukon's late. Ballmer, the deadline for April Fool's jokes are April 1st.
[ducks]
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
OMG ... this is going to be very interesting.
...does it run linux???
I guess it's just easier to attack someone who disagrees with you than address their arguments? You claim to have limited resources but fail to explain how paying for Windows Server and Virtual Server licenses is saving money over using already purchased older hardware (or even buying lower-end hardware cheaper than the Microsoft licenses). You also ignored the VM likley will not work just like the real thing so you might not even get a valid test. Virtual PC allows me to run Windows on a Mac, but it does not offer the same functionality as a Windows PC.
I didn't say that Virtual Server is worthless or will have no value to anyone; I simply pointed out some issues. Perhaps I should apologize for introducing a little critical thought into your day?
And are we gonna be sure that Linux under Virtual Server 2005 runs as it should? We all remember the case of DR-DOS and Windows 3...
Ignoring the age of the quote I see no reason why a company can't provide support in their product for a product they dislike or compete against. Hell, you've been able to import non-Microsoft file formats into their applications for years.
Especially if it's going to mean that they're actually going to have a more competitive product or bring them more money.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
>>This is virtually non-sensical to me.
As it should be. Only Marketing Weasels(tm) understand one another's mumblings. It lets them say things without really saying anything. The fact that this unintelligable banter is confusing to you means you're still a geek.
(Oh, and just for the record, that phrase translates into "Damn Linux! Won't it just go away?")
Indeedy, I'd much rather run windows on top of linux, preferably through an abstraction layer. Part of this is accomplished by Wine et al.
Seriously, if MS actually released an abstraction-based Windows-on-Linux OS I would happily pay for it. Linux-on-windows has been done already, and while it does benefit me in that I can use some of the Linux functionality, I'm still lacking the inherent security/reliability.
I sure hope you are doing the Integration testing in a TEST environment and not using your production machines! Large DataCenter and Windows is an oxymoron anyhow. Most very large datacenters are running a mix of boxes, a mainframe or two, Linux/Unix boxes and Windows boxes where it makes sense. Personally I think running VM on a mainframe and then running Linux in VM partitions will be far more cost effective than trying to run Linux under VS. I don't see how you can support a large # of Windows boxes in a datacenter with "limited" resources unless you guys are working 60 hours a week to keep up with things.
I thought everyone knew that.
I submitted this article - although a bit too late I guess :)
Anyway, it says there that "Microsoft plans to license, royalty-free, its Virtual Hard Disk (.vhd) file format" - That should be interesting! I wonder how open it will be!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Finally! All the security and stability of Windows combined with the user-friendliness of Linux!
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
VMware doesn't care what you run as a guest OS. I can basically write my own OS and it will boot. It emulates the virtual machine from the bare metal up, starting with a POST.
You should have asked him for money first.
We just started using VMWare GSX Server on Win2003 and it is both a cool concept and thusfar has been working really well.
For us the idea is we have a half-dozen 1U boxes that are getting old and need to run basically stand-alone environments; they don't play well with other software environments. Budgetarily replacing the 1U boxes with new 1U boxes that meet the hardware standards is ridiculously expensive _and_ a complete waste of disk, CPU and I/O capacity, not to mention power, heat, etc. The current boxes (dual P3 700s) sit at near-idle all the time and don't have much, if any, local storage or I/O demands.
As it stands right now, we have 4 virtual systems (1 freebsd, 3 win2k) running on a dual P4/3.2 xeon server using 1-10 percent of CPU capacity. We have about 6 more systems we'll migrate over to this environment and I seriously doubt we'll get beyond 20% CPU utilization. Plus we can easily clone some a template server and have a test or eval box going in about 5 minutes. You can also snapshot a virtual disk so that you can rollback to the checkpoint point (great for upgrades or testing), or just clone the entire virtual disk.
It works best with systems that have low I/O and CPU demands or bursty demands; I wouldn't do it with systems that have high I/O or CPU demands. You can dedicate physical LUNs to VMs, but it kills some of the flexibility in exchange for performance.
For the wags who criticize me for not running it on Linux or using their high-buck ESX product: We looked at ESX, and management of the ESX system we thought was excessively convoluted and the performance for our needs not meaningfully different. We have no problems with stability on 2003, either, plus we're a FreeBSD shop, not a Linux shop, and we didn't want to BS around trying to run GSX under FreeBSD, as it wasn't a supported host OS.
I figure this is way more the future (since it is the past on OS/390) of computing than blades, especially once its merged with SAN virtualization. Now if only Intel would give us a CPU capable of complete virtualization. I also think that eventually MS will merge virtualization completely into the OS, and will license you on total CPUs and total concurrent images.
For those of us with large datacenters and limited resources, Virtual Server is great for throwing something in the mix and seeing what sort of integration we get.
You'd have more resources for your datacenter if you'd stop deploying buggy and overpriced software like Virtual Server and the resulting CAL fees.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I, for one, see this as a good thing. What we've been screaming for all along is interoperability, and the ability to choose hardware and software that will play nice with each other.
I'm by no means a MS fan (own an x86 machine about 10+ years ago, and had my own macs for the last 7 or 8 years), but I don't care if they die or not. I just don't want other vendors to die. I know this is not an easy, black and white, kind of situation, but any increase in the level of interoperability is a win in my book.
I know it's a pipe dream, but I do dream for the day we are all using common, open , data formats, and vendors compete on the merits of their software, versus locking you in. Seems to have worked for the digital camera industry for the most part... I know cameras don't share data files, but at least you don't have to go out and get new software when you get a new camera.
What the hell happened to your bunny virus!? it all fell apart! poor little bunny...
When I read about .Net I was schocked to learn that it was a virtual machine. I could see why SUN created a virtual machine, so they could run on any kind of machine, not just the 2% or so running Solaris.
But, why would the company who's OS runs on 90% of desktop and, what 40, 50% of servers, would want to run a virtual machine ? What's the point, isn't native that much better ?
The only two options I could think of were
Now with this annoucement makes #2 that much more plausible.
Perhaps the significance of this is that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as an OS people might want to use, which seems an upgrade from its previous status as a communist cancer."
And yet whenever anybody criticises MS or Windows on Slashdot, hoardes of MS supporters will pipe up and accuse them of being Slashbots.
Would any of them care to explain why it's one rule for them and one rule for us?
After all, I was under the impression that Slashdot was originally a site dedicated to Linux and open source in general. Coming here and complaining about bias is rather like going to Alaska on vacation and complaining about the cold - fucking retarded.
Yes, but you have to ask WHY do they change? Primarily, from my point of view, would be their customers have been telling them to knock off the rhetoric and make their goofy operating system more friendly to fitting into a network with more than one platform. It's well known that there are apps which run only on Windows, say Exchange, by maybe some workgroups are on Linux and you want them to talk nice to each other.
From my perspective, it leaves a taste of bile in my mouth when a vendor comes in and tells us some of our system should go because it's crappy, communist, whatever. That's not a professional way to sell the strengths of your product, by trashing the other vendors. You should be promoting your advantages, flexibility, reliability, scalability, etc. Especially when some customer may have a large investment in Unix or Linux and wants a few Windows servers for something. You have to strangle the laugh directed at someone like Ballmer, who tells you to throw away all your investment on some slander. (This guy makes billions? Where's his eye-patch and cutlass?)
I recall having a servergroup which included 4 different operating systems and trying to get them all to make nice. Windows was always the sticking point. It's well about time for them to shape up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This makes me appreciate that the only thing virulent about the GPL is freedom. Most virii spread sickness. I don't know of too many that have any good effects!
So, is this an attempt for Microsoft to vaccinate themselves against the GPL? (That's just a joke. It's funny. Laugh.)
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
looks like MS has found a way to charge licensing for Linux... first you have to pay for windows then for the virtualization software.... clever...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
But does it run OS/2?
I just ordered the upgrades for my ancient VMWare Workstation 3.2 licenses to go to version 5. I'm getting antsy waiting for my licenses to arrive.
VMWare is staying ahead of MS in terms of technology. Version 5 of VMWare Workstation allows "teaming" of virtual machines from different physical computers into a single cohesive test network. I can't wait to try it.
VMWare is already a popular product. It's more popular than all it's competitors. In order to compete with it MS MUST allow compatibility with Linux. Otherwise they might as well write off that product and try something else.
It seems the Linux Cancer is starting to eat away at some of MS's rhetoric. Seems to me this is a pure example of the market dictating terms to the product providers.
Nice.
Aside from a few crack pots it is well known that: Linux is more stable/reliable that Windows. That said I can trust a Linux machine with VMWare to run Windows sessions. Why in the world would I want to trust Windows to run Linux sessions? Really, if I am a disciple of Bill wouldn't it make more sense to run simple things on Cygwin or more complicate software on a stand-alone Linux box? The thought of Windows controling an array of Linux sessions is 30% scarry, 70% comical.
You know, one thing that Ballmer got really right is the following: "When we launched .NET, frankly, I was saying, will they like it? Will the dog buy this dog food?"
So here you are: Microsoft thinks of you clients as dogs, and of their software as food. Makes perfect sense to me... :D
It's also obvious that a lot of existing MS customers probably want to at least give Linux a try.
Dual booting between two OSes in a corporate environment is not practical - even if you have an IT team with the knowledge to maintain two different operating systems on each PC, there is still the workload increase for them as a result.
Therefore, MS allowing Linux virtualisation means that they still keep their OS on each machine and therefore still get their revenues from each license of Windows.
Yes, in some sense it does give a lot more people the chance to try out Linux, OpenOffice etc. which is a good thing but the decision, from my perspective anyway as a Linux user, is that it's just a business decision that won't really affect their sales of Windows and MS Office but will allow them to take marketshare from VMWare.
I also wonder how much each license of Virtual Server will cost - if they keep the price of it high, it's not something that will be purchased for every PC user in the corporate environment anyway.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"The MS OS department is old and slowly breathing its last breaths."
What a bunch of assumption-filled bullshit.
"Derp de derp."
for our current technology as academia and governement.
"As I see it, the transistor was invented in academia, the internet in government labs and academia; both free-and-open-information-sharing friendly (well not always with the government). "
Then you need to check your eyes. The transitor was invented by Bell Labs, part of the AT&T monopoly. Unix was also invented there.
Ethernet, the core technology behind the internet was invented by Xerox (funded by very valuable patents) and made a standard by Xerox, HP, and DEC.
Academia and governments have played a role too, but it's just not accurate to suggest that corporations haven't played a key role in the advancement of technology.
What about simple dual booting?
Doesn't the latest Windows erase Linux
when its installed? Er something like that.
I have Win95 and RedHat dual booting but
I think I heard its has changed in recent years.
If Microsoft would let the world know exactly what "hardware" they are pretending to be, OS developers could code to match, much like they do with real hardware. Where they aren't perfectly emulating real hardware, they must publish enough information for OS developers to "work" on the VirtualPC "hardware."
It'll be up to Microsoft to make sure their code works as documented, and publish code or documentation errata when bugs are found. It'll be up to the OS developers to make sure their OS works on the as-published virtual hardware.
MS is right - they do have to keep up with the Joneses, er, the VMWares of this world.
Back in the Old Days before MS took over, VirtualPC ran DOS, Windows of all flavors, OS/2, and other OSes, either 100% or with a few device limitations and/or mandatory configuration changes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
MS Press release, 2007:
"New distribution format makes the OS irrelevant"
"they are also going to license their virtual disk format royalty free"
Now, if MS at some point included VPC on every desktop OS -don't laugh, it could happen, say five years from now- think of the possibilities.
An "application" could be comprised of a very minimalist custom OS + only the specific functionality for the application needed. With a virtualized PC, you've got a completely standardized hardware platform, although one that is hardly performance oriented. For instance, the older VirtualPC used what, a virtualized 2-d video chipset without much "hardware" acceleration. You could package up an entire single-application Linux system in a very optimized disk file. The O/S need never be seen by the user.
The next step will be customized vitual hardware+driver modules for VPC plugin, consisting of vitualized higher performance video chipsets, RAID, etc. Instead of "DLL" hell, ten years from now we'll have some sort of virtual hardware hell as the single simple standardized vitural hardware platform expands...
Shouldn't they focus on making their o/s stable/secure before they worry about running other o/s' on top it? Talk about a house of cards. Or this is a matter of "if you can't fix it, make it more complicated?" Which I personally suspect to be the development philosophy of several s/w companies.
Nobody's commented on the fact that yes 2003 will support a Linux instance, but did they say what kind of Linux instance??
Could be an MS-flavored Kernel!
What's with USA people's hate toward communism? In theory it was supposed to be utopian community, where everyone participated and all wealth was distributed equally. I don't see anything particularly evil in that.
In Russia (or Soviet Union) it failed spectaculously thou...
PS. I wouldn't want to try communism myself thou, being that I'm not a total loser so my standards of living would deteroriate in return. (And because of selfish people like me, communism fails)
Bot Assisted Blogging
And will MS also try to break it like it broke Java?
Just for kicks (and because our office was being shut down and we had the time), I set up a VirtualPC window as a distcc server with a couple more VPC windows as clients. Each gets its own IP at "boot". Worked great, although performance sucked, of course. I never did get to the point of finding out if the packets ever leave the host PC (some actual work came in)...
The trouble with cancer is that it grows very fast and doesn't die off...
'Somebody somewhere once wrote an article about how MS won't be able to break Linux with a headless version. However, I think they'll still try, stubbornly and insidiously. And even while virtualizing, they'll still be selling a copy of Windows, won't they? Wait till they announce something to go with Linux. Then you'll know. They'll even co-opt LGPL if it serves their long term purpose.'
By the way, why are my "Conspiracytheory" metatags being deleted?
-clueless
Linux' newest flavour!!
-clueless
3 instances of Gentoo inside Virtual Server 2005. 1 on XP Pro and 2 on Server 2003. Works great and is suprisingly stable.
The one I have running on XP is on my work laptop... which is nice because while it's easier to use windows in the office, i can still carry my development environment around with me.
If you haven't used virtual server, it has a decent web-based interface using an activex control (which makes it ie only), so you can easily share your virtual environment (MSVS requires that IIS is running).
I've run XP under Gentoo with VMware on a laptop, Gentoo under XP on a laptop with VMware and now Gentoo under XP on a laptop using Virtual Server, and the third has proven much more friendly in a corporate environment.
It's not like Microsoft could have stopped people from running Linux in the VM, they're just being pragmatic and recognising reality.
>>"Organized sports are communist." C'mon, it's hard to be a communist union, when you are a state-sanctioned monopoly. Still, you've inspired a new tag line!: From each, according to their ability; to each, according to their marketability.
Are you sure this isn't an April Fools Joke? I suppose it is very necessary as VMware has the market cornered, and without supporting Linux and other OS's Microsoft can't hope to touch the market share that VMware enjoys. I think the key here though is that Microsoft is saying, whether or not they want to admit it, that Linux is for real, and that they MUST support it in some manner if they hope to continue the strong position they hold now. Not to support it shows how ignorant they really are when it comes to what their customers want, so I take this as a positive sign.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Linux Running VMware running Windows Running VirtualServer2005 running FreeBSD running PearPC running OS X running MoM running BeOS running Sheepshaver running Mac OS running Bochs running Linux Running WMware running...
We of the Linux Inquisition have one weapon. Our chief weapon is Fear. Well, Fear and Distros.
Um, we have two weapons. Our chief weapons are Fear, Distros, and an almost Fanatical devotion to the Penguin.
Err. The Linux Inquisition has three weapons - Fear, Distros, and an almost Fanatical devotion to the Penguin.
Plus, we run on MSFT servers.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
you get all the disadvantages of Linux with the advantages of massive downtime, unrealeased patches to Windows Server, and you get to pay tons of cash!
Cool!
Um, what was the question?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I got the beta demo when they first announced it and was able to boot knoppix 3.4 just fine.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This is interesting news because it really is a break from Microsoft's past behavior of ignoring the existence of other OS's for the most part. And it moves them one step closer to creating a Microsoft distribution of Linux. Think about it. It is likely that some distributions of Linux may function better on their virtual server than others, which support-wise may implicitly force them to endorse some distros over others. It is only a small step from here to rolling an optimized distro for use on the virtual server. Then enhancements and bug fixes are likely to be developed and tested first on the MS Linux distro before others.
The nice thing about all of this is that Microsoft can do as much or as little as they wish if they play nice and adhere to the GPL and OSS community standards. Indeed, I think that the community will do a great deal without their help to make sure Linux runs well in the virtual server. As long as Mr. Balmer doesn't get cold feet, it could be a good thing.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
One has been able to run all sorts of distros under Microsoft's Virtual PC for years.
I just bought the 2004 edition :) Not that Linux has problems running on it but would have been fun asking MS support about the problem that happens with dynamic CPU frequency change when running Linux - The CPU stays in Max power mode once you run a Linux VM under Virtual PC - It never goes back to normal on-demand operation unless you reboot.
I recall MS Windows 3 ran on DR-DOS (the old competitor to Microsoft's MS-DOS).
:-(
:-)
A Windows beta version was coded to randomly crash on DR-DOS -- just enough to stop first-adopters from using DR-DOS and to generate some bad buzz about it.
But we all know that Microsoft wouldn't do anything like that with GNU/Linux, don't we?
What's that old saying about being leery of horses with a gift in their mouth?
Fat Tony is a cancer on this fair city.
He is the cancer, and I am the... um... What cures cancer?
-- Chief Wiggum, "Bart the Murderer"
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
windows is a cancer and unfortunatly it's terminal
The one on the MS announcement of Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 where it is admitted it breaks several Microsoft system products.
Then at the bottom, MS says (referring to the list which includes its own products):
We do not support or endorse any of these products.
Nice to know.
But then, we already knew that.
Also noteworthy is the new term used to describe a broken product: it's not a bug, it's not even a feature! It's a "regression"...
So now we can call Microsoft products "retro" and make them sound cool.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
For some reason, I've got a bad feeling that this is just all one big scheme and that M$ is going to purposely make linux run horribly under Virtual Server (ala their antitrust antics of old) so they can now have a shining example for the uninformed of how muc better Windows is than linux....
now where's that tinfoil hat....
Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer.....
Think about it: if the "hardware" is standardized, there is no need for developers to create drivers anymore.
Biggest compaint among Linux users when new hardware comes out? "Doesn't work with XYZ video chipset" and "hey, is anyone gonna make a driver for my obscure WXY transponstermatic"? and the like. Once users realize they can run their Linux specific apps on a windows box for which the drivers are perfect, they won't load Linux as an OS. Linux as a native OS never conquers the desktop.
You used to package .OCX's with your application, then .DLL's; next it will be a whole mini-linux, acting as nothing more than libraries for a single application, running on a Windows desktop PC...
Whether real or for now, vaporware (the product still has "miles to go"), the questions should be:
- Will companies use an MS tool to manage networks containing varying OS'
or
- Will companies use another tool to manage networks containing varying OS'
Virtualization needed includes network-wide backup and restore of images and files, allocation of dasd, secure access, identification of failing boxen and then seamless rollover, etc.
I hope the subsequent discussion includes tools you are using today (Openview and its successors and 3rd party add-ons) and which may evolve to meet our needs.
Your thoughts?
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
a) I can't see Microsoft willingly abiding by the GPL, and it would be a lot more damaging for them to attempt to release something which violates it.
b) Because of a) above, if MS do anything in the open source UNIX space, it'll more likely be with FreeBSD...simply because that will still allow them to make the rules.
On the other hand, an interesting route that they could possibly go would be to get involved purely in Xorg development. That way the underlying OS is provided by Linux/*BSD, (the area that Microsoft are *not* good at) while Microsoft continues working on usability/UI. (an area where they *are* reasonably good) The other thing is that the MIT license is still sufficiently flexible that it allows them the possibility of some protection for their IP if they desire it, as well.
If Microsoft were to come out with their own OSS DE/WM a la KDE, I'd use it, personally...or at the very least check it out. Not to sound too much like Laura Didio and the ZDNet crew here, but Microsoft DO have some idea of what Joe Six-pack wants...as they've been making large amounts of money from him for the last 30 years.
That exact quote used to be (still is?) up in Red Hat's office.
I doubt it. As a base for building applications on top of, Linux and associated GNU software is far more mature and has many more full scale apps than the JVM (as an OS) ever had. Linux based OSes are easily available and easy to run with full software suites on common desktop hardware, unlike Suns JVM. MS has waited to long to try and re-use this same defence method.
Does it go on forever?
Lets face it. The kind of people who would use MS VirtualServer or VirtualPC over VMware are not going to be running Linux on it anyway, they're MS fanboys.
99% of the time, people who use any MS server products in enterprise, us *only* MS products (possibly because they have vendor lock-in and don't interoperate well).
Would you buy VS/VPC over VMware, now you've heard they "support" Linux running on it?
And what does "support" mean: that they don't actively block Linux from working, or they provide accelerated display drivers etc?
I'm very happy with VMware WS5 thanks.
#include <sig.h>
That should be "cyuurre".
A real VM should be able tun run anything claiming to be an OS designed for the hardware. Supporting Linux should be a no-brainer.
Perhaps this is just another half-arsed Microsoft product that works only because the various special case hacks support each other to the point that the software doesn't immediately fall apart.
...Microsoft is dying! =)
It seems your grasp of the English language has also failed "spectaculously"[sic].
If some high muckety muck, at the source of my biggest IT expenses, starts telling me not to look at some technology because it is "e-vile", the first thing I'd do is give it a hard look.
But maybe that's just me. And I'm just an engineer, not a CTO with a shiny MBA, so what do I know.
You mean like the memorlyleaks in Firefox v1.0 (which they wont fix until v1.1) and Java which puts my machine down from 700MB free mem to 200MB free mem in less than a week?
Yes, indeed. Something terribly wrong with the OS. And boy, am I gonna be flamed for saying naughty stuff about Firefox.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
VirutalPC, before Microsoft bought it, had Linux and OS/2 support as well as others.
I've got FREEBSD, Mandrake, Trustix, and others working in VirtualPC 2004. Slackware doesn't work.
I cannot imagine this took them a lot of work to make it function on Virtual Server.
But even if you were a paying customer, MS woulda told you to piss off rather than supporting you until now.
...a perfect solution for stability problems in Windows.
Can we get Linus or someone to write a sploit to detect when it's being run under this software - and then just have it take over the machine with a nice install of Linux? There'd be a bit of thrashing around, and maybe some rebooting, but in the end this little sploit could turn most x86 machines in to something useful.
Since this is a Virtual Server, can you Visualize a Virtual Blue Screen of Death?
Microsoft acknowledges the Linux is a plaything and what better environment to play with something than in the nice little sandbox of a VM.
Bingo!
(as in buzzword bingo...)
And you need a reality-check and stop sucking the tits of Ballmer.
e ck out Wikipedia. To quote:
To quote an excellent post:
Re:Departmentalisation... (Score:2)
by Hadean (32319) on Thursday April 21, @03:08PM (#12304983)
(http://www.rawmesh.net/hadean/)
Ch
"It was originally written by Richard Brodie for IBM PC computers running DOS in 1983. Later versions were created for the Apple Macintosh (1984), SCO UNIX, and Microsoft Windows (1989)."
In otherwords, Macs had Word 5 years before Windows. Sadly, there are no dates for Works.
So who wants Microsoft to support their Linux installation anyway? Linux has always run on Virtual PC. The only change is that now you'll have the option of paying Microsoft to support it. Assuming you have a mission-critical Linux application, it's hard to imagine a good reason to run it in an emulator box under Windows. It seems to me you'd be better off to run Linux on a Linux box, and interoperate with Windows servers when you need to. Unless you're porting Linux apps to Windows ... in which case Microsoft already provides lots of support.
...somewhere around the time someone said something complex, like how a sandbox works...
OS/2 is still a formally supported client platform.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
VMware is going huge in the big iron market, where consolidation of servers makes management a whole lot easier. They make charge a bit more than they used to (though academic licenses for $120 are available), but they won't hang when they've got VMware ACE.
A lot of folks are very impressed by delta updates to vmware images...
I've just been thrust into the consulting line of work while looking for anoteher job after being laid off.
In my old company, there was some non-licensed software here and there, mostly to open files from clients. But I have been working with a smaller company in the same industry where almost all of their software is not licensed.
I don't like working with un-licensed software so I have given the owner a book on open office, and talking about switching to firefox to counter the spyware, and thunderbird since they are only using outlook for the email features.
Have others encountered entire industries that seem to have high use of un-licensed software? How have you gone about the subject of licensing the software, and getting past "well, if I start with one, I'll have to do it with the others", and "I bought win98, why do I have to buy XP?"
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Back in the old days of WinNT3.x, Microsoft was attempting to get people to switch off *nix (SCO et al) to NT. People didn't mind since an NT license cost only a third of a SCO licence. To support this move, MS added a bunch of features to make the switch easy (eg. supporting streams modules). However, much of this comparability stuff was crippled. People did some "proof of concepts" and started porting but soon found that they had to switch to native NT drivers etc to get reasonable performance. Soon thereafter, MS dropped the support for much of the compatability stuff thereby completing the bait and switch.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
his donations amount to one of us giving about 500 bucks to the cause, some more, some less. WOW. not bad for a lifetime contribution.
..is what helped bring the non-technical person to the computer - and that brought their money..
...is that we make sense...
id have to agree there. gates made all that possible and more with a browser that looks like swiss cheese to anyone with a copy of notepad and a website. bet you probably thought that gator thing was a real cool feature huh.
which helped increase the computer industry to what it is today.
would that be the computer repair industry or the spyware industry? i know you arent talking about the server market. (btw everyone i know uses linux at home you twirp)
So far the only person speaking out of his ass is you.
i would definetly re-think that one. personally, id much rather be outside of his ass.
But then again, the problem with speaking with people like you..
no matter what we show that Bill or people like him [MICHAEL JACKSON] have done as positive - you will say "well that doesn't count, because its a cheap stunt."
no, it doesnt count because its an expensive stunt.
I guess everyone donating donates as a cheap stunt.
cmon, pay attention here. are you even listening?
some donators donate dough but dont donate for the sake of dough donation, theyre just donating donations so they dont look like dicks.
seriously, its an expensive stunt, not a cheap one. snap out of it.
Your a troll - go jack off to a porn mag.
you must be really old.
back in my day we had to jack off to magazines!
i know, sorry fellas, im an asshole today.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
Promiscious Mode.
Try it - it simply doesnt work, you can't sniff within a virtual operating system.
I hope they fix it for themselves, but I already had to change *back* to VMware.
Had to fight politics and funding to go back to VMware as our company is a MS droid shoppe.
I'm so glad we are back with VMware (I run GSX with 8 images) and around 20 VMWare workstations in a security classroom.
Laugh at it.
Fight it.
Scorn it.
Embrace it.
Kill it.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Commmunists and Cancer still exist!
They may suck but you can't avoid them. Better to deal with them head on than let them kill you.
Geez. How soon we forget. An entire page of commentary and no one has mentioned it yet, but that is the Microsoft strategy.
Furthermore, there is no reason at all to believe that just because M$ says they bought VPC to compete with VMware that it is true. In fact, given Micro$history there's every reason not to believe it.
Anybody got a pool on when we see the first Linux patch from M$ - the one that will let Linux run on VPC? Remember Java - they didn't "break it", they just "extended" it.
And as for NT 4.0 support ... Phfft. They don't have any interest in supporting those kinds of antiques unless they're getting more $$ for it than they do for hacking together another OS-upgrade-support kludge.
I predict VPC support from M$ will be very short-lived; it's a near term wedge they can use to deceive a small fraction of a small market into spending some money with M$, yes, but the real goal has to be exactly what the kind of stunt they pulled with Java. Copy it until they can't get away with it - create proprietary extensions, then produce a clone with a different naming scheme, sanitized binaries, and no traceable legal relation to the original product. Once they have that VPC will disapear, support will dry up, and anyone gullible enough to have bought it will be told to "upgrade".
I'll say it again, Bill: the only thing you can do that stands a chance of keeping Microsoft in the software game long term is to release a Linux distro. Of course, you'll probably have to hire some developers, but from what I hear you won't have to pay US wages... Good Luck, and God Bless.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Once I see Microsoft offder support for Commodore 64 and TRS80 on Virtual Server, then I will say "Wow...Windows Virtual Server Rocks." However, Microsoft is still running the great "Get the Facts" website, which is pure BS all the way around, yet they think enough of Linux to support it in their Virtual Server. Sometimes ya gotta love them. They are good for a laugh even if you need to wrap your head in Duct Tape from time to time to keep it from exploding. Perhaps in their next big move Microsoft will name Richard Stallman as CEO.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Bill wants to be able to crush linux in the palm of his hand...
in a virtual terminal on his palm pilot.
(after it locks up)
Linux (Knoppix and Damn Small) have been working fine for me using Virtual PC 2004. If they build a real VM environment, no reason why Linux shouldn't run. So support mist merely be saying that they will handle a phone call and, of course, get $$ for saying this.