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."

Comments

And I have a copy of DNK Forever to sell you...

[sammy baby]

"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.

This is cool

[CDarklock]

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.

Not new...

[Mad Merlin]

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?

Re:This is getting old ....

[fearofcarpet]

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.

Re:Sabotage

[Deagol]

Linux, being open, is so quick to fix and get patches out, I doubt this will be a consideration. The fact that there are ways to detect if you're running within, say, VMware, leads me to believe the same is true for any virtualization system. So, there can be run-time tweaks to adapt to such an environment if MS gets sneaky this way. In fact, good distributions should detect and account for this fact during the install itself, as it would save possible headaches later on.

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.

Re:Balmer takes 5 years to change his mind

[Belial6]

You are going to run Windows. MS bought VirtualPC for two reasons.

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.

<prediction>Your custom application doesn't work with the new WinServer 2010? No problem, an NT4.0 image with all the drivers that VPC emulates compiled in (to tie the image to the host OS) is sitting on WinServer 2010 with VirtualServer. Just mark your application as a NT4.0 application, and it will run just fine.</prediction>

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.