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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."
"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.
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?
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.
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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!
The trick is, with server Virtualization (IMHO) never run production stuff. They're great, really great for test labs because you can snapshot and undo and you have other neat features. But they're horrible for actual real world work. If I was looking for a smaller form factor from my services in a production environment, for real, I'd go with a blade server chassis.
Ironically though with your virtualized Linux servers you could trick them into having indefinate uptime, since the OS running in the virtualization could be snapshotted and "frozen" in a state before reboot. VirtualPC 6 does this really well on the Mac anyway.
But actual server uptime count lost relevance to me years ago. The longer my uptime the bigger an indication that I should probably patch my kernel or core OS! :)
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
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.
The difference is that Linux is not just another competitor like Apple, Sun, Adobe, whatever. Linux is not another company, it represents and entirely new (re-hashed?) philosophy surrounding computer technology. 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 corporate America swoops in, like always, and takes these concepts to market. And life is good? Sure, why not, companies move in to innovate and compete, Apple is born, Microsoft is born, and everthing is good? Well, no, not this time. Microsoft, through their tremendous monopolistic power, begins to shape our philosophies surrounding software and how it should be implemented. There is a lot of history around UNIX, Novell, Microsoft, etc. that some of the older computer-folks could do a much better job of explaining...
Fast-forward to the 90's. Suddenly the WWW enters public awareness. Suddenly computers become like American politics; you get two choices and both suck. (I'm sorry, but early Macs sucked - I love new Macs though.) Then I learn about this thing called Linux. I wander over to the CS library and grab Red Hat 2. Huh? The library? Free software? How good can this be?
Fast forward to 2005. Windows XP is now asking me to "validate my genuine microsoft product" before downloading the latest security update in a tidle wave of security fixes that can only be released by Microsoft because the source is guarded like the recipe for Coke. In the other room a native 64 bit Linux OS compiled from scratch (I love you too Gentoo) is humming away will oodles of software written by people from former Soviet Satellite countries, India, China, South America, Europe, Mexico... Meanwhile I'm being forced to run Winblows inside a virtual machine (VMWare really is a nice program) because the American Chemical Soceity and Cambridge Soft have succombed to the power of the Gates and gone out of their way to write software that won't even work with WINE. Then they require me to submit to their journals using said Microsoft-only software. They actually have the stones to charge $1200 per license for this software, in what is essentially a scam to pirate grant money. That just isn't right!
Linux is really the flagship for the battle between freedom of information and big-business' inability to cope with change. Open source software has problems yes, but it sets up a playing field where 16 year olds from Turkmenistan can compete with one of the largest corporations in the world. There is a sea change in that is flattening out the World thanks to the wonders of the computer age. The Army of Penguins is ready to leave fipper-shaped welts on the backsides of the mighty Empire and Slashdot readers want to be on the front lines, ears to the ground, sharpening our beaks, er swords, er motherboards..?
Oh, and you know they're running scared when they trot out the old "socialism is communism" argument. Pfff, by their definition labor unions and organized sports are communist.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
It really just depends on what kind of loads the VS will be subject to. Once the VM Additions are installed they run a LOT better. That's one thing I'm really unsure of with the newly touted Linux support. If they don't have an equivilent, it could run HORRIBLY slow. Even with the VM Additions though, we've noticed about 60-75% disk access (read/write) on the virtualized environments so anything that requires significant disk I/O is going to really REALLY suffer. We use them primarily for our dev/demo/test environments and for secondary "production" work (get used only when the primary servers are being worked too hard). VS SP1 is supposed to be coming out and they're saying an "overall" 30% performance gain. Heh, what it really means we'll have to wait and see :-)
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.
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.
I love VMware. However, I think they've gotten a little on on their horse these days (ditching the $100 hobby license), so I'm looking forward to them getting made irrelevant by upcoming open source options. plex86 (bochs spin-off) seems to have died of ennui, but Xen, user mode linux, and QEMU (going into the kernel, no?) are gonna overtake VMware fast.
In fact, VMware reminds me of AcceleratedX 5 years ago. They got cocky, charged too much, then became irrelevant by the next major rev of X11 servers.
Method of processing duck feet
For some reason, I've got a bad feeling that this is just all one big scheme and that M$ 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.....
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.
1) So that they can have a thin client server that works. Run images of full OSes on virtual machins, and a low end machine with just enough juice to run Remote Desktop can now be use quite well.
2) To resolve any problem they will ever have with backward compatibility.
With VPC, MS no longer needs to release new versions of every application they ever made just to upgrade the OS. On my system VPC gets 80%-90% processing speed compared to the native CPU. They could do some work on memory and HD speeds, but that will come. This means that as long as Visual Studio runs at decent speeds inside of VPC, MS doesn't have to upgrade it at the same time as the OS.
With VPC MS doesn't even have to stay on the same hardware platform. If a new (or old) CPU takes a huge leap of speed due to some breakthrough, and it becomes significantly faster than the x86/AMD64 platform, MS can move all windows software to the new platform by porting Windows, and VPC. This would immediatly make them a player in the new market.
Buying VPC was the smartest thing I have seen MS do in years.
Because the US is run by corporate overlords, who don't want wealth to be distributed evenly, because they wouldn't be overlords if it was. Add in the "American Dream", a belief that anyone can become a corporate overlord (which they can, but it's very unlikely), and the middle class will oppose communism as well, just in case they happen to become overlords as well.
Another reason is that the Soviet Union was a competitor for world domination for the US, and the most visible feature of the SU was communism, so it was a good buzzword to whip the masses into a frenzy for the World War 3 many people were expecting would break out between the two superpowers.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Will Microsoft support OS/2 on the VirtualPC platform? Microsoft purchased VirualPC just when VirtualPC for eCS( OS/2 ) was released.
Maybe, like BASIC, Bill keeps insisting Microsoft keep its hands on those "special" projects. Heck, he's probably still got.... I was going to mention MS-Bob code hidden in Windows but then I rememberd that stupid paperclip character... See how Bill works?
Anyways, I think the VirualPC purchase was all about letting one PC run more than one server process when running on Windows. This Linux stuff is a side effect of some existing customers making noises about previously supported stuff which Microsoft stopped supporting. Heck, the DOJ might even have stepped in since its obvious VirtualPC was more about running/enabling NON-Microsoft operating systems.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus