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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."
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.
Seems that it would be the other way....if you 'needed' windows for something...you'd fire it up on top of Linux (or other Unix type OS)....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
This is for server virtualization, so it makes some "sense" in this context. It's a choice at least. For my money though it would surely be VMWare if I was going to virtualize a few test servers around the office.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
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
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.
And since we are not mind-readers, our only source of insight into Bill Gates' head is, well, Bill Gates.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
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?
(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!?
Why would anyone want to run Linux on top of windows
/me hugs vmware. Oh yeah, the host OS was windows. I was able to do my work without having the trouble of rebooting, installing , etc. So in this case (and i suspect many others) it was damn handy to have linux running on top of windows.
I've installed VMWare (workstation) on my pc at home. I booted a virtual linux pc, created a ramdisk image i needed, booted another linux pc and i used that image. All without rebooting the 'host' computer.
IMO the only thing that really kills Windows uptime stats are the security patches. If they could get better at patching without a reboot, those stats should improve quite a bit. If you're having to reboot your Windows servers weekly, something's wrong with the admin (or your software), not the OS.
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.
It's not that he's given up fighting Linux, it's just that they are trying to make the best possible product, and what good is VirtualServer 2005 if it doesn't support *nix? Seriously, what other operating system are you going to run on x86 that isn't open source or a derivative of the "communist" OS?
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.
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Uh. They could already do that with VMWare or even coLinux...
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...
oh please, get off it. The high horse ain't that high. 1) if you can't learn to forgive people for doing bad things (i didn't say forget) then you are probably in a world of trouble yourself 2) lets not forget all the good that Billy has also done. I would list it all, but I don't have a day or two to do all of that research.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
>>"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.
Just remember how Microsoft SUPPORTS a competing product. Remember JAVA? And there was also the JDBC driver for MSSQL, that took them 1.5 years to release after announcing that they would support JDBC.
In other words, what comes out of their mouths, is not what really happens. Or the results are not any where near what people EXPECTed. They have their own language and it's a dialect of marketing-speak. IMO.
Still at GhandiCon 3 IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
One has been able to run all sorts of distros under Microsoft's Virtual PC for years.
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...
ah, the good old days when management came to the techies to ask what technology was the best for the job....
It was right about the time that MS Visual Basic came around that every shoe salesman turned manager started coming up with screen shots of "applications" they've written and that we should be able to put a product together in a few weeks based on that... It wasn't THAT bad but it did happen a couple of times and that was a couple of times too often.
The 80's were a good time to be in tech. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You can't.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I'm not saying don't forgive. I'm saying don't forget - which apparently agrees with your sentiment.
You're right that nobody but Bill Gates has insight in to Bill Gate's mind. The best we can go by is what Bill has said or written (and he hasn't been shy about that). So to some extent we are forced to take what any individual, including Bill Gates, says or writes at face value.
I'm not sitting on any high horse myself. I'm also held accountable for the things I say and write. There has been times where I've had to defend my position. And there are times I've had to admit to my mistakes. I don't see anything out of the ordinary to expect the same behavior in someone else.
If Bill Gates states that he's made a mistake and retracts his past statements, I'm willing to forgive (for what that's worth). If he doesn't, then it would be well to remember what those statements were - whether you agree with them or not.
What's that got to do with anything? I'm not demonizing Bill Gates. I'm not attacking the man personally. But I am pointing out that he has a certain professional stance that should not be ignored. And that professional stance is specific to his past statements on Linux (and related issues). I don't see the connection to his philanthropy.
To hell with Remote Desktop. I'm still waiting for a truly multi-user Windows operating system. How hard is that? Seriously..
What is your penile percentile?
microsoft has done nothing to indicate it's going to change its ways. i don't blame it - it's a driven beast that will do whatever it possibly can to grow and dominate - but that doesn't mean i have to like it or forgive it.
2) lets not forget all the good that Billy has also done. I would list it all, but I don't have a day or two to do all of that research.
if this were ten years ago, i'd be with you. but that was then, this is now. microsoft has become the beast, and it has to be tamed or destroyed.
this is about my rights to software, my rights to control the software i use, and my right to legally interact with the rest of the computing community. microsoft is driving software patent laws to take those rights away from me. i'm not going to stand for it.
microsoft is the enemy now.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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."