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The Next Round in the Virtualization Wars
GvG writes "After making Virtual Server available for free some time ago, Microsoft announced today it is offering Virtual PC as a free (as in beer) download. They also announced a change to the Vista license related to virtualization: Customers who deploy Windows Vista Enterprise have the ability to install up to four (4) copies of the operating system in a virtual machine for a single user on a single device. Even better, nothing in the license requires that Microsoft Virtualization technologies be used - if you want to use a competing product as your Virtualization solution, you still get the four extra licenses for use with VMs."
I guess its fine for Vista, but frankly if I'm running an OS in virtualization, I'd prefer one that uses fewer resources than Vista. XP is a hog, but a thin one by Vista's standard.
... does it run... aw, fuckitall.
*head asplode*
the version of VPC that is freely available only runs on Windows.
Blarg!
Check out this link as to what will work on VPC and what won't. http://vpc.visualwin.com/
What a bargain!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Um, NO.
WINE uses reverse engineered Windows APIs to run Windows apps w/out running a copy of Windows and isn't compatible with a metric shit-ton of software.
Virtual PC runs a full copy of Windows in a sandboxed environment, great for servers to compartmentalize their various services or for Mac users to run a Windows-only app and is exactly like running Windows on an actual PC.
Don't you people know how to use Google?
Microsoft is scared, this is the first time I can ever recall them becoming MORE lax on licensing schemes for a new OS. They're not just scared, they're terrified! This huge industry push to OSS and virtualization could be the end of Microsoft and the tech economy as we know it. Or, they could pull another halfway-decent suite out of their backsides and surprise us. Even if this is the climax of the market share crescendo... at least at the end of the day the poor IT guys stuck in Microsoft solutions will thank us all for it.
The only reason MS is doing this, is because they are desperately trying to save a business that's in more trouble than Ronald McDonald cartwheeling through Baghdad.
---southpaw
Up to now, one could run as many copies of the OS in virtual machines as one wanted, hardware permitting. Now the limit has been increased from infinity to four, not unlike the chocolate rations in "1984". And the author of the summary does not realize that any more than Winston can avoid his fate...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The P4 designs SUCKED, and PPC was better. The Core designs from Intel are worlds better and wipe the mat with PPC.
Stupidly clinging to one position no matter what variables change is something that politicians do that makes me absolutely sick. For some reason, geeks have adopted this kind of cult like mentality too. Ignore changing circumstances and stick with your original position at all costs.
In every race, opponents change positions. Sometimes one opponent has the lead, sometimes another has the lead. In the case of tech, however, the race just keeps on going, and there will never be a 'winner' per se, just back and forth trade-offs in leadership.
Nope. Unless you bought it in the last couple of weeks or so you would not be entitled to a refund. Since you accepted the price of whatever it costs, you are not entitled to automatically get a lower price once it is lowered (or made free). I doubt Microsoft would be nice enough to refund the money of EVERYONE who bought it.
It's similar to the example of someone losing their dog and putting up signs offering a reward. If you were to find the dog and give it to them without knowing about the reward, then see the sign and try to claim the reward, you would not be entitled to anything.
Wow, I actually retained knowledge from law class. Amazing.
If I buy a five user licence for Vista I can have up to 20 virtual machines on a single system and still be legal?
Is a box with four VMs running Windows four times more vulnerable to attacks than one running a single Windows instance?
How fast at sending spam would such a machine be after (about a minute after it's plugged to the internet) being infected by a worm?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
You're probably better off using a VMWare offering on Linux with Win guests. Less reboots due to security updates of the host OS and no licensing costs.
By the looks of things, it does, in fact, support quite a wide range of *ix-based OS's...
Have a look for yourself: http://vpc.visualwin.com/
Missing some of SCO unix server OS's, and some misc client/server distro's that I've only ever heard of in passing, but overall... kinda impressive, for M$. Well done to them. I've not used VPC myself, and I haven't used VMWare since my college days (v4.0, where it ran like a dog on RedHat(choice of OS wasn't up to the students), but even if it only runs half as well as they say does, it'l be more than usable.
The snapshot and clone features in VMware v5 beat VPC 2004. VMware v5 is a recent product VPC 2004 is not. In general VPC 2004 ran windows guests faster then VMware v4 (four). The difference was marginal. I have not tested the speed of VPC 2004 against VMware v5. VMware runs all non-windows guests faster then VPC v4. (In some cases infinitely faster as VPC had trouble with certain versions of Linux and FreeBSD.) You can run a kernel level debugger such as SoftICE under VPC. SoftICE and Vmware have/had issues. IIRC VPC has no opengl/directx guest support. I doubt that you will ever see that feature in either product. The new virtualization instructions in Intel and AMD processors may change that, but I would not count on it.
I use VMware daily. VMware support other guest operating systems better then VPC. But the big winner is VMware's management features. The snapshot managment, cloneing and templating are wonderfull.
Interesting. I would have assumed that I could install any number of Vista virtual machines for my use on my single computer -- especially since only one (or two on a dual core) could be considered to be running at the same time. Now Microsoft is telling me only 4. Sure sounds like I'm losing, not gaining, here -- those bastards!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My point is, the old Windows interfaces (Win3.1 is not an OS) were doing some really non-standard things behind the scenes, there's no guarantee they'd work even in emulation.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Microsoft VM didn't let you run anything older than Win2K, seeing as support for Win98 just ended...
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
The problem is VMWare opened the door. They released free products (player and server). It's actually their move to try and drive MS out. MS doesn't have a product that competes with their high end server products. So they are hoping they can become ubiquitous as the VM technology in the low end market, so whenever anyone thinks VM, they think VMWare and buy the high end stuff (MS will have a high end virtualization solution at some point). MS now can claim, with 100% justification, that they are eimply pricing competitive with the market. A monopoly can't use preditory practises but they aren't reuired to screw you. There's no "If you are a monopoly you have to charge more than your compeition."
In any competition, you have to be careful what you do because it could invite reprisals. The same si true when it's a bigger player. If you decide something should be free, they have every right, regardless of position, to answer that with a similar free product.
Now they could get in trouble if they leveraged Windows to try and force their product. IF the virtual license applied to VPC only, that could get them in trouble as they are using their OS monopoly (which I find a funny term, given the Apple and Linux competition) to help their VM division. However since the license applies to their competitiors equally, it's not anti-competitive in the slightest.
Well, I read the EULA (or whatever Apple called those) for 10.2, and there was nothing said there about the legality of running that OS on non-apple hardware. So I ran it on PowerPC emulator http://wiki.pearpc.net/index.php/PearPC_Tour
Did the Apple change their EULA so you cannot do that with 10.5_x86?
I've scanned through the number of replies regarding this and I just find a number of fanboys saying this is the triumph of Open Source over the gigantic evil corporation. The fact is, this is a smart move to promote Microsoft technology (VPC) that has had a bad reputation, but has seen steady improvement. VPC isn't so much competition for Xen as much as it for VmWare Workstation. Both VPC and VmWare allow the installation of unmodified operating systems (not so much VPC), whereas Xen requires them to be ported or "enlighted". Tack on the fact that Xen only runs on Linux, and the ported version of XP is unavailable due to copyright issues, and Xen doesn't look like a very realistic solution for the primary uses of virtualization technology, developers testing their software on a different OS, or sysadmins running virtual servers (production, or testing of Windows platforms). Yes, some people do prefer Windows Server 2003 over BSD. VPC on the other had, works well enough for testing on a variety of Windows platforms, will now be free, and is in most cases good enough. The primary reason I can think of why someone would virtualize instances of Vista is to provide RDP access to a sandboxed environment, not to use Vista as a server. VPC and this Vista deal shouldn't be seen as a competitor to Xen. If you're planning on virtualizing instances of a server, especially a Windows Server, VmWare GSX or ESX server would be the only real options. Regarding licensing issues, a virtual machine is exactly that, a virtual representation of a completely different machine. It will show up the the OS as different hardware. Have any of you tried activating an XP installation within VPC or VmWare? It still asks for a new, unique key (unless of course, its a volume license). People question the financial costs of this, that Microsoft will now forgo the revenue on four vista licenses. First of all, many estimate that Vista will retail at as low as $100. There will actually be tighter license restrictions, as there are plans to have an active licensing server for volume licenses, instead of the honor system currently in place (which is often abused). The motivation of this deal isn't to make money, its to promote certain technologies, and to encourage people to convert and stay with the Windows platform. Why does Microsoft give away millions of dollars of software in the form of the MSDN Academic Alliance every year to schools and students? Why does it have an entire "software evangelist" program? It's not to make money in the immediate short term, but to make people convert to Microsoft products, many of which are quite well made. (Anyone play with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server?) Sure, there are open source alternatives but sometimes its easier to click a few buttons on a GUI instead of customizing a .conf file. And, if people convert to the Microsoft way of doing things, they're more likely to purchase the money makers, like Office, or use certain software solutions when making purchasing decisions for their IT department.
But how do I do that if I have a Vista system and want to install a copy of XP?
Microsoft licenses typically allow you to run an older version of the same software in place of the current version if you wish. I'm not sure that this applies to the vista license, but I suspect it does.
The same question exists if I have an XP system and I want to install an XP virtual machine on it.
The XP license (at least the corporate one) allows you to run one virtual instance, in the same way the Vista one allows 4. All they're doing here is increasing the numbers.
I was able to install Tiger_x86 (10.4) under VMWare. Got networking with one of Maxxuss' pathes. Still can't get sound to work though. Other than that, it runs fine in VMWare.
Yes, VPC can run a variety of Linux distributions and is very useful for testing code, or having a secondary operating system. See this http://vpc.visualwin.com/ for the full list of supported platforms. However, VMware workstation is still much more configurable and powerful (though not free) and will allow you to run almost every x86 operating system completely unmodified.
If you download enough free beer you will eventually upload.
©God
Uh, no, it doesn't. And I've got the proof sitting right in front of me:
95% - idle
2% - Virtual PC.exe
2% - taskmgr.exe
1% - svchost.exe
their OS monopoly (which I find a funny term, given the Apple and Linux competition)
...until the day you try to switch and you realise:
Yeah, it's absolutely hilarious that people would claim that Windows a monopoly...
* 95% of your software no longer works (yes there are free alternatives to most things, but you already paid for a lot of expensive software so why can't you use it?)
* You can no longer play your favorite multiplayer game with your friends from university.
* Several pieces of your expensive hardware only has Windows drivers and now you can't use it.
* A few of your favourite websites (including your net banking) no longer work because of ActiveX, Flash 8 or severe rendering bugs.
* You can no longer watch the games/videos/greetings your family emails you as executable files (although this is arguably an advantage).
* If you are using a free operating system, you may have trouble installing software covered by patent laws (mp3 players for example).
* You can't access the files on your hard disk from another oprating system because Windows encrypted it (OK, this one hasn't happened yet, but I'm looking forward to it happening soon...)
Still laughing?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Up to now, one could run as many copies of the OS in virtual machines as one wanted, hardware permitting. Now the limit has been increased from infinity to four,
Actually no, before you needed one license per virtual machine.
But now the question I am wondering is:
Does the new licensing for Vista Enterprise only apply when using Virtual PC, or can you also install up to 4 extra copies when using VMWare's solution?
If it's only the former, it looks like another case of them abusing their monopoly. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are playing it fair this time, but does anyone know for sure?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
sysprep isn't a third party tool.
And the best part is that absolutely none of those reasons are why Microsoft is considered to have a monopoly.
You do not need to be a lawyer to undrestand why Windows is so popular and manages to get such a huge share of the market. Microsoft has a monopoly because for many people, like it or not, Windows is the only choice, for reasons I listed in my earlier post. It is that simple. I am not judging whether this is good or bad, legal or illegal, I am just stating a fact.
I am not considering if they are abusing their monopoly, which is what I think you are talking about. This is a totally different, valid but more complicated question, and that is when the lawyers start getting involved.
you've gotta go buy an off-the-shelf PC that has a copy of Windows XP preinstalled
This isn't true, at least not in Denmark where I live. I can't remember the last time I bought a PC with an OS pre-installed.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Isn't Vista already virtual
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
the download page at microsoft indicates that, while the license type is "free", it as a limitation of 45 days!
Miscellaneous
Number of Downloads 89,052
Uninstaller Included? Yes
License Type Free
Limitations 45-day trial
Old PC-controlled laboratory instruments. If the instrument still works, why (a) pay for a new instrument, (b) train technicians on the new instrument, (c) possibly buy new mounting hardware, (c) train technicians with new versions of the software, (d) come up with new calibration parameters for the new instrument, (e) work out new statistical correlations for the different sample types' properties, (f) get the instrument certified for certain industrial applications (automotive, medical, etc.), (g) possibly buy software to convert between older and newer data file formats?
Some lab instruments will run for a good 10-20 years... there are probably still a few DEC PDP's and Apple II/GS's out there connected to instruments somewhere!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Just in case you're interested, you can pop open the .vmx file for your virtual machine and add the following line:
svga.vramSize = "67108864"
That'll give you a 64 Meg card. Just enter any number in bytes to get whatever amount of video RAM you want.
For the curious, you can also add
mks.enabled3d = "TRUE"
and enable (very) basic 3D support. I mean basic though. I think the spinning cube in dxdiag works, but that's about it. Anyway, VMWare is a bit more video-capable than it seems, but you do have to change a couple configuration items.
Could someone explain to me why are VMWare and Microsoft rushing to give some of their virtualization products away free?
VMWare makes money selling really cool management suites for their virtualization technology. They figure if they give away the low-end stuff, then everyone will use it and those with money will buy their high-end stuff, which works with it. They are otherwise competing with several free, open-source implementations which would take over if they tried to charge for them.
MS does not like the fact that VMWare is king here and they don't want open source taking another market either. As a result they want to make sure everyone is using their solution and it chokes out the rest of the market. Once that is accomplished they can start charging and developing competitors to VMWare's management stuff.
The short answer is, they don't want you to move to a free, open source solution because they can't make as much money then.
Short answer: Save massive amounts of $$ of new hardware.
... seconds to boot and "sleep". If I want to move my dev windows environment, copy the files from my laptop to desktop... boot vmware with that image. woot!
As a developer, it's VERY cost effective. Load OS, snapshot, configure, snapshot, load your app and test... if you find something, back off to previous snapshot (takes seconds) and load app again, test. Otherwise you're spending many hours reloading os (or ghosting) to get a 'virgin' test environment.
As I work solely in Linux (with exceptions of gaming), getting my windows environment for development / testing... power up the VM. "Pause" when done
You can also setup a virtual network, load 3-4 or 10 virtual machines (limited to your ram for the most part)... test out new servers (ie failover, load balancing, etc) without having 4 $4000 machines humming away.
As a user, it's easy... do anything "questionable" in a vm... if anything bad happends, blast that image (or reload back to a snapshot) and try again.
-zariok-