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Windows 7 To Include "Windows XP Mode"
Z80xxc! writes "Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite reports that Windows 7 will include a built-in virtual machine with a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3. The VM runs in a modified version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself. While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers. Microsoft confirmed the feature last night."
Altho I call it Kubuntu with XP running in QEMU....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The only way they'll convince people to switch to Windows 7 is to bundle it with XP!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
"While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers."
Yet who is more likely to have old applications or hardware that will need XP? If you have the latest and greatest full bells and whistles OS, you probably have the latest version of your apps as well. Once again, MS misses the boat.
It's already getting hard to find any moderately powerful desktop or laptop rig that doesn't have a CPU that supports hardware virtualization. Hell, I've got an older development box with a single-core AMD64 chip that supports KVM just fine.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
aka BSOD.
if it will run XP mode software, wouldn't that mean XP style viruses now have a key right into the system?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
We heard you like BSODing, so we put Windows in your Windows so you can crash while you crash.
Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of "upgrading"?
... one of the drawbacks of the WIndows platform - from an development and engineering point of view - is that it's backwards compatible all the way back to (if I'm not mistaken) Windows 1.0. That's an insane codebase to be dealing with. By bundling an XP VM with Win7, they can- for the first time - take the backwards compatibility crap out of Windows and concentrate on providing a stable OS.
Isn't that essentially what Apple did with the transition from 68000 series chips to PowerPC, from OS 9.x to OS 10, and then again from Power PC to Intel?
I've believed this was a necessity for quite a while.
D
http://www.bistolas.net
if it can interact just like it was on windows7, will it be just as vulnerable?
will people choose to use that rather than windows 7 all the time?
will it run on top of a hypervisor? ie, can it access the hardware directly?
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have had a Windows XP Professional running in VMware on my MacBook and my Vista 64-bit desktop from the beginning. It solves a lot of problems with some quirky legacy apps I have to run.
And thanks to the USB support, I can also use:
1) Very old USB scanner with XP 32-bit drivers. I use it a few times a year for digitalizing reciepts etc., and I really don't want to pay for a new one.
2) Random gadgets with stupid software and buggy drivers.
Getting this free with Windows 7 would really rock.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Unfortunately, while this is a long overdue solution that other companies have used fine before, but it's going to prove problematic for Microsoft. Things that won't work (and Joe User will try to do anyway):
1.) Install their XP-compatible Antivirus program. "It said on the Windows 7 box that I could run old programs!"
2.) Install a printer which works on XP only. "The printer box said it works on Windows. Why can I only print from some programs (the older ones seem to work)?"
3.) Play an old game at reasonable speed. "I installed Super Hardware Killer Shooter for Windows XP and the 3D is running really slow!"
Virtualization is a great thing. I use it work all the time and love it. The public doesn't quite "get it" yet. They're going to see some things work, some things not and wonder why the hell that is. It happened when Apple moved to OS X, but the user base was much smaller so the complaints were less.
Until someone creates a hypervisor which is presented in a completely transparent way to the OS, in that things difficult to virtualize (e.g. video card hardware) run at normal speeds, it's just going to appear to the user "every time I run an old program, either it's too slow or it doesn't work".
Maybe they could cut out the virtual machine and offer Windows XP SP3 as a separate product? It would eliminate all of the virtual machine overhead.
This move to bundle this with Virtual Server seems analogous to the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows 98. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to kill VMWare and Parallel's market share like they killed Netscape's browser share.
Finally, it is pretty sad when your operating system requires a virtual machine to emulate what the operating system should do natively. I would have preferred it if Microsoft went all the way with this option and did a complete revamp of the Windows executable and security architecture with the implementation of this virtual machine architecture (Apple implemented this during the OS 9 to OS X transition). As it is implemented right now, the virtual machine seems like a waste of resources as it is duplicates existing functionality while requiring more overhead and a separate configuration.
-Valen
So let me get this straight. I can buy windows 7 and not have to worry about it sucking more than XP because I can run XP in virtualization. So if I go back to XP I just paid for the privilege of running XP twice? Microsoft has really gone downhill lately. The upgrades seem to have negative marginal value these days. Who would have paid for the privilege to run Windows 3.1 in Windows 95? Where's the innovation? It seems like each release they just take features away and only give them back to you if you buy the "Ultimate" edition.
... one of the drawbacks of the WIndows platform - from an development and engineering point of view - is that it's backwards compatible all the way back to (if I'm not mistaken) Windows 1.0. That's an insane codebase to be dealing with. By bundling an XP VM with Win7, they can- for the first time - take the backwards compatibility crap out of Windows and concentrate on providing a stable OS. Isn't that essentially what Apple did with the transition from 68000 series chips to PowerPC, from OS 9.x to OS 10, and then again from Power PC to Intel? I've believed this was a necessity for quite a while. D
While I agree with your observation regarding making a "break" in the code by providing a virtualized "backwards-compatible" environment, what the hell is the reason the codebase IS compatible all the way to Windows 1.0?!?
When a company says "we're no longer going to support Windows 3x or Win9x, they should MEAN IT. NO support for the software. NO support for the hardware. This would be like me walking into the Ford dealership and demanding to know why they no longer "support" my 1978 F-150 for parts.
Rather ironic that Microsoft seemed to learn the "tough shit, upgrade" customer approach when it came to deploying Vista (hardware requirements), yet their software will still run Office 95. At some point, you've got to cut BOTH cords.
So does this mean M$ will be extending the fully supported period for XP again, as it will be shipping with W7?
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
By "confirmed the feature last night", did you mean:
"confirmed their intention to include an interesting feature, which in all likelihood will be dropped in the last quarter before release because other issues critical to the fundamental infrastructure of the OS have been discovered and will require 110% of effort in order to result in an acceptable basic release?"
I've been trying to learn Spanish lately - my corpspeak is seeming pretty fluent.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
It's an interesting decision. By implementing an easy-to-use VM for legacy software they're able to stick to their policies (maintain support for all legacy Win32 software) and on the other hand restructure their operating system with new knowledge. Each time I see news on Windows 7 I can't help but wondering if Microsoft has finally seen the light. There might be hope still!
Now we know what this Win7 is meant for.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
But MS Virtual PC uses software virtualisation.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I'm talking universal binaries in this case, not the 9 to 10 change.
But even that was a radical shift, so it was either that or cut off the existing software base, far different then windows XP to 7 which is basically the same.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
New and improved with full backwards compatibility leaves the errors of the past in the operating system, and hence can never be removed. By adding an emulation mode they're ensuring backwards compatibility, yet making it that bit more awkward forcing new software writers to conform to their newer operating system yet not breaking everything.
Sometimes it's hard to get rid of your old mistakes because people end up relying upon them. By adding pressure in the sense of annoyance forces design changes without breaking everything. I swear they tried something similar with UAC but fucked up the ratio of annoying to usable.
Who need's speling and grammar?
This would be great if Microsoft included a friendly P2V tool like platespin or vconverter. Then when people buy a new PC, it becomes short work to P2V their old XP system into a VM sitting inside their new system. A lot of people hate to upgrade for fear of losing their old files and settings.
I know a few people who are really well connected in Fortune 500 IT circles, and they tell me to a man that *NOBODY* is planning to move to Vista or 7 (by which they mean *NOBODY* running a very large corporate IT enterprise). They tend to have corporate security models including stations locked down in various ways that work, deployment models that work, drive reimaging procedures that work, standard desktops and toolsets that work, and legacy code that works, much of which DOESN'T work in Vista or 7. This is the reason you can still get an XP box -- MS keeps raising the bar for it, but corporate just keeps paying the freight. So this is MS next move, to try to slide these guys into 7 by letting them virtualize their XP model.
The problem is that while this will solve some of the IT guys' problems (legacy apps, desktops, maybe security model) it will not solve what is probably the most important problem to some of them, deployment and drive reimaging. Also depending on how easy it is to break out of the emulation sandbox, they may not be happy with the security model either. When you are talking about pretty much rebuilding a network with 100,000 machines, paying an extra couple of hundred in blackmail per box for MS to let you keep using what you know works makes a lot more sense than jumping off into the void. MS may overcome some of the corporate reluctance with this ploy, particularly at smaller companies, but I don't think it's going to crack the egg they need to crack.
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If this is being shipped with the 'current OS', that means security updates and patches for Windows XP will need to be continued throughout Windows 7's lifetime. Just because the underlying operating system is 'secure' does not mean the virtual OS does also not need to be patched. So this may be a good thing for current uses of XP as well, it depends on how Microsoft controls and implements that patching.
I'm kind of surprised they're doing this, but if it works as advertised, I think it'll solve a lot of headaches for corporate installations.
eg, our work environment uses an interesting mix of VB6 apps, delphi, a couple of VB3 apps thrown in for good measure, plus very version-specific IBM middleware that fails to work properly on Vista (AIX terminal sessions via an IE6 activex control, mmm.)
Some of these components fail to run on IE7/Vista and our software vendor's not interested in supporting it on anything newer than XP.
Xp emulation in Windows 7 will solve our current problem getting new hardware that can run this system. I'm sure we're not the only company out there with crap like this going on.
So, on the one hand, our crappy mission-critical "enterprise" software can continue working - but on the other hand, there's no impetus for the vendor to upgrade it to work on a new version of windows.
We'll wait and see.
Find out if your processor supports it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization Unless you're playing a highly demanding application, third party solutions should work just as well. Some options are free... this one from Microsoft isn't. Unless you have the right processor already and intended to get the Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows anyway, you'd be better served without it.
No. Not in any way.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
The U.S. Military is heavily invested in several applications that have been tested at Microsoft. (Military members do have offices in Redmond for this purpose.) Windows 7 was shown to have some issues. The USN scrapped plans to move to Vista, planned for this quarter, and decided to wait for Windows 7, but needed XP compatibility. The VM compromise was brewed up.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's just like in that Dilbert cartoon where they find out the best marketing strategy for their new music-player is to sell it a bit cheaper than the iPod, bundle it with the iPod and provide free access to a landfill.
Well anyhow, it's Microsoft's only choice. They won't be able to sell their newer OSes because they are not compatible. The _only_ reason why people ever bought Microsoft's product was backwards compatibility.
There's no such thing as "XP SP3 x64." XP x64 is actually Server 2003 built with a client configuration, and not XP. In other words, it shares service packs with 2003.
But no, it's not going to include any 64-bit guest OS. Why would it, all the legacy software people care about is 32-bit.
Apple ran 9 and 10 together for a period of time as well, plus they released the Carbon API back to OS 9 as well as having it available to 10. They killed a whole heap of API's from 9, kept some that they're only just getting around to killing and then created a new one which they ported back to 9 so that you could get over the gap even easier.
Apple have changed architecture twice in their lifetime AFAIK and have done a great job of maintaining things.
9 to 10 had its own emulation stuff, the "Classic" layer, and the PPC to Intel transition had Rosetta.
The thing people are missing is that Microsoft is admitting that they stuffed up so badly that they're willing to ship copies of XP to the corporates whilst still getting their latest version out and bought. This is about ensuring they don't continue to go backwards because whilst Apple went forward Microsoft went back - and that must scare someone at Redmond.
I always wondered where this setting was...
Historically, people tend to use at home what they use at work, which is how MS Office took over the world. Many home users won't care but workers who use XP and XP apps at work will in some cases prefer to use what they're used to at home. MS knows this and it's another reason they want to push IT into their newer OS.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
So does this mean Microsoft will have to support XP throughout 7's lifetime? Or after a few years will they just stick a dialog box on it saying "WARNING: This virtual machine has not had a security update in a couple years, use at your own risk."
Apple called from the year 2000 and wants their legacy transition strategy back... but hey it did work, so I say go for it Microsoft.
BTW virtualization need not be in a window. When Apple provided OS 9 aka "Classic" support they didn't make the apps second class citizens in any way relevant to getting work done. Sure they were running in emulated mode and were not as fast as they could be but they had access to all peripherals, etc.
Modern virtualization allows for way better performance, full access to all hardware and as importantly can still be sandboxed.
They should hide all the virtualization aspects though and just let the apps open like they are regular apps with maybe a title bar note saying "(Windows XP) or something so there is a clue when an app gets updated to full native capabilities (the note will go away.
When Mac OS did this transition it was actually quite exciting (though also frustrating) as I would be on the look-out for the OSX native version of some software to come out.... then we got to do it again when the Intel binaries came out...
Anyways, if Microsoft does it right it will be transparent and will allow them to finally do away with the legacy support roadmap. This XP virtual mode will be there as long as it takes for companies to move their apps over to 64 bit Windows 7/8 whatever compatibility.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Education users would KILL for a Win9X VM in
windows 7. A lot of educational applications had to be "retired" because XP wouldnt run them in a secure mode. Educators use good programs until they dont run anymore a lot of programs from 10-15 years ago children in K-2 classrooms still enjoy but wont run on XP.
I wonder what VMWare, virtualbox and xen have to say about this?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
One wouldn't want to make it too pleasant or otherwise you're stuck in a situation where software is never updated the newer operating system because 'emulation is good enough'. It has to be good enough to allow it to work but not too good as to make it something one would want to do for ever.
If I was also Microsoft I'd work to make sure that all Microsoft software is fully compatible with the latest version of Windows and offer free upgrades to enterprise customers for applications that Microsoft makes and the other vendors fail to provide updates for their own applications.
Nothing will make a company put money into putting out free updates more than Microsoft offering to replace incompatible products with Microsoft equivilants.
as one of the three applications that I'll be allowed to run simultaneously?
Start charging yout freinds, simple, efficent and they don't actually mind. I do so with anything I do for a freind that takes long then 15 minutes. Payment doesn't have to be cash of course, I have accepted beer, pies, cookies and free dinners in the past.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
In many cases (especially if virtualization is used):
:).
root in virtual machine + bug in your CPU and/or bug in vm software = root in host machine.
Apparently there is an exploitable bug in intel processors. The "offsets" for the exploit might change depending on the motherboard you are using. So you better not be using a popular motherboard
Oh well, what a surprise, a geek buys a cpu with nice features.
On the other and every product line of intel contains at least one product without hardware virtualization. These processors are cheaper than their relatives with hardware virtualization and thus more consumers that don't explicitly look for that have a good chance of buying one.
Does this special VM of XP improve driver support? I.e. will I be able to stop working around the non-existent Vista drivers for my old laser printer?
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My only wonder is.. what happens if I run a Windows 7 VM from within XP.. and then XP in that VM.. and 7 in that VM... I want to make an infinite XP/7 paradox and DESTROY THE INTERWEBS!.. or just have a bit of a laugh, screenshot it, and add motivational text about how I have too much time on my hands..
From what I can gather about this, it operates very similar to how VMware Fusion does on the Mac. A fully-booted, fully-functional XP build is running in a VM in the background, but individual apps that are running on that VM are presented and displayed on the host desktop like a native application. I.E, no nested desktop-within-a-desktop, like VMware Workstation.
Windows XP's Supported time is about to expire (and move to extended support where only security updates are issued)
Does this in any way change this?
Windows 7's Mainstream support will at least continue till 2014 (Release Date + 5 years) and extended support will end 2019 (+10 years), long after XP.
With XP available as "Classic" does this change anything in this aspect?
Propably not, since its not "part of Windows 7", but only an optional download.
There are some other questions: wil i need 2 AV solutions like normal VMs, or is one enough?
can Windows 7 access the files inside the XP machine? (or is it seamless like OS X's classic where no "Virtual disc" exists?)
I don't see this feature being added to the corporate IT toolbox of practical ways to run legacy applications. Lots of business computers are going to suffer larger than acceptable performance hits when running XP virtualized on top of 7.
Imagine XP being virtualized on top of 7 on a desktop with a Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU (no Hyper-Threading or Virtualization Technology Support), 1 GB RAM, 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD, and a circa 2004 integrated graphics card. Many companies still have tons of computers like these that will barely be able to run 7 let alone XP virtualized on top of it.
The fundamental problem is many people are just as happy today with their XP computers as they were 5 years ago when they purchased them. Although many of us who have new quad-core computers with solid-state-disks and loads of memory can barely stand using them these archaic machines, it is all about what the end-user is able to accomplish with their toolbox at the end of the day.
Disclaimer: I run Windows 7 on my main laptop, love it, and look forward to it hopefully being adopted with huge open arms by everyone.
A free pre-built and licensed WindowsXP_SP3 Virtual machine being included with Windows7 sounds good to me.
I wont be using their free VM to migrate my old XP OS, yet it will be a fun free toy to play with.
I will be restoring my current XP OS to a Virtual Machine running on a physical drive using Acronis Universal Restore.
Its easy enough to move almost any Windows OS from a VM to Hardware and Back again if needed using various software's like Acronis.
If its not a graphics driven or extremely high I/O machine VM's work work good.
Unless they also include a "Linux mode", I'm still out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Great! This means that I can continue running CARDFILE.EXE from my Windows 3.1 installation. This program has migrated successfully from 3.1 to 95OEMB, 98SP1, 2000, and XP. I've not gone to Vista since I've yet to find a simple, free replacement that would have run under Vista and (hopefully) imported the .CRD files. (Also Vista is full of DRM, and would run like crap on my Vista Ready embedded Nvidia 6150 graphics desktop, and likely break other applications as well.)
Sometimes you want a program to just do one simple thing well. CARDFILE is one of those programs. Now it looks like it ought to run under the right -- read expensive -- version(s) of W7.
If there's a better replacement, feel free to point it out to me and I'll appreciate it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Did you mean it that way, or to bundle XP with Windows 7?
Your way is funnier.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not quite, there are a lot of Core2Duo and some C2Quad chips that don't support intelVT. Intel seems to offer it as "a cherry on top" feature.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Wow, way to drink the kool-aid.
You just posted that you thought the exact same move (emulation of previous OS) is brilliant when done by Apple, and a total screw-up when done by Microsoft.
The kicker is the up-mod.
Of course, for most folks this isn't really that different from Compatibility Mode in XP, but I guess that's old news.
Good on M$. Finally a compatibility mode that will work. Everyone is mentioning business, and yes that is key, but what about those legacy homebrew academic programs that never quite work right in traditional compatibility modes. To all of slashdot, don't complain. I am sure that if M$ included this, they would also include the ability to turn it off.
AMD didn't add AMD-VT until they made the change to AM2/DDR2 based systems. There are no 939 CPUs with AMD-VT.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
The only reason we get to gloat after Vista is because of the media shit-storm it caused. Windows 7 will be what comes pre-installed and it will be a little bit new and a little bit shiney. The VM for simple XP compatibility is just a good idea that takes backwards compatibility out of new os architecture.
Quack, quack.
I'm sure that if only the engineers at Microsoft who wrote and maintain the NT kernel could only benefit from your expert advice and throw it away for a Unix variant, that Microsoft would surely benefit. If only they would listen to the millions of customers clamoring to have support for all of their applications thrown out in favor of Unix! Why on earth have they not hired you to oversee their operating system division?
With the rumors of performance optimization and now this, Microsoft appears to go all out to make Win7 an instant success.
Still waiting for the other shoe to drop...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I should be surprised this got modded up, but it *is* on /.
Linux, as a kernel, does not AFAIK run significantly faster on equivalent hardware vs. NT. Some of the userspace certainly does, but some is also a lot slower - searches always take longer even though there's a lot less installed on my Linux partition (I keep it pretty clean), and without superfetch it feels that applications like WarCraft 3 (in Wine) or even Firefox take ages to start.
Viruses are a wild goose chase - they have existed since before Windows, and they will probably exist long after unless there's a drastic change in the fundamental capabilities of computers (i.e. mor ethan just an apprximate Turing machine). Security holes do still exist for *nix applicaitons and even kernels - for better or worse, I get more security patches per month on Linux than I ever do on Windows, although only occasionally are they at kernel or base library level - but even if malware authors can't xploit those, they'll fall back to the standard approach that has worked so well against Windows (itself a rather hard target these days) for the past few years: the user. There is absolutely nothing in *nix security that can protect against the dancing bunnies problem, especially if that user can get root access (although lots of damage can be done even without).
As for things you can do on Windows that you can't on Wine: well, try Exchange for starters. No other groupware solution has yet come close to the integration, feature set, and market deployment levels. Office 2007 is another; OO.o is an impressive project but they're still far behind in a number of areas (although Office 2008 does run on Mac, so that might not count). Then there are the games (wine is doing wonders here, but new stuff that doesn't work right is coming out all the time too), the Windows-only drivers (my modem *still* doesn't work in Linux, nor does the WiFi on one of my older laptops), and all the thousands of custom-written programs, only ever tested on their target machines, that businesses and other organizations have been creating for the last decade or so to run on Windows. Oh, you might also want to look at power management; with the proprietary nVidia driver (since the FOSS one is nowhere near ready yet), suspend-to-RAM in Linux quite simply does not work (on my current system, or the last two before it). This is, to put it mildly, a problem on a laptop.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
If you think NT is "creaky and old", you're a fucking moron. NT is arguably a far, far better system than any UNIX. Microsoft got out of the UNIX market a long, long time ago (you do know that, right?). NT is superior in most ways, and is POSIX-compliant. Any POSIX-compliant application can be built against these POSIX calls and will work fine.
The stuff built on top of NT may or may not be good--mind you, I think it is, as the "special value" of running it is that Ubuntu is not user-friendly (plus lacking in those "game" things, as well as a decent office suite which neither KOffice nor OpenOffice actually are, and WINE is not an acceptable compromise for running games and Office) BSD the same, and I'm not paying for a Mac--but NT is leaps and bounds better as a kernel than anything in the UNIX world.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Very old USB scanner with XP 32-bit drivers. I use it a few times a year for digitalizing reciepts etc., and I really don't want to pay for a new one.
Does FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's) still let people buy time on a scanner?
They should hide all the virtualization aspects though and just let the apps open like they are regular apps with maybe a title bar note saying "(Windows XP) or something so there is a clue when an app gets updated to full native capabilities (the note will go away.
The link "confirmed the feature" in the summary points to a page with a screenshot of this feature. It indicates the environment based on the theming: native windows have Aero (Vista style) title bars; virtualized windows have Luna (XP style) title bars.
I run XP in VirtualBox on a Debian testing host workstation. Stable, secure, and the only time it can contribute to my security risks is during the hour or two a week I run it. (my Eudora mail client runs in Crossover Office)
As for the performance hit, the way to deal with that is simply to run a faster processor. Though even in virtualization, remember that XP was designed for processors a lot slower than anything you'll see in a modern computer.
M$ being willing to put virtualization in their OS gave them the opportunity to switch their host OS to a secure, stable, and efficient *nix (even with their religious adherence to proprietary OSs, they could have bought SCO unix or licensed AIX)... they could have ported their flagship apps to a native *nix environment while using XP as a legacy compatibility layer. The result might have been unstoppable.
Happily for the rest of us (except for the unfortunates running Windows as a primary OS)... they chose otherwise.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Only power users have CPUs with virtualization support? Okay...
I suppose only power users have CPUs made after like 2006...
to make a major customer happy, they probably did NOT go back and optimize their newly fixed Vista aka Win7 to remove the issues attempts at backward compatibility built into it. Maybe that's what they're planning for Win8, should they survive long enough to build it for real.
I'm not saying built-in virtualization will damage them, but I suspect their customer upgrade scheme will. Imagine having a low-end computer, the cut-rate Win7, and an HDMI monitor the low-end Win7 won't run on. A customer buys the upgrade and discovers the increased memory and CPU and graphics requirements of the more expensive Win7... and that their computer runs the way XP does in 128M. Or not at all.
Multiply by several million and imagine what the Win7 buzz is going to be like afterwards.
As a Debian user who runs XP in Virtualbox, I can afford to be amused. I don't think M$ can survive two OSs perceived to be bogus in a row. M$ stockholders won't be amused by this any more than the customers will be.
Tech Public Policy stuff
In all fairness, there are enough home users who find this feature cool, but stupid that it's only available (to us) in Win7 Ultimate. Why not make it also available to Home-Premium users (not Home-Basic or Starter edition), but include XP Home instead?
Also, does this mean that XP will be crippled where it can't connect to the Internet? If not, then Microsoft's going to have to keep providing security fixes for the XP virtual machine until Win7 is retired!!!
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
I'm wondering - Microsoft is now embedding its vitualisation technology into the desktop (they've already done it for Windows Server of course).
Is this the next salvo in the Microsoft vs. EveryOneElse? I'm thinking what happened in the Browser wars. NCSA/Mosaic initially was a superior browser to IE. Now is the same thing going to start happening to VMware/VirtualBox/ParallelsDesktop? It's hard to compete with Free (VirtualBox is free of course for personal users).
I'm also wondering if this is a sort of admission that Windows7 won't offer a fully compatible API for legacy applications to carry on working?
Crispi
Every new version of Windows takes up ever more hard disk space and RAM than before. It's not enough that we get one big ass OS now but you get 2! What happens when you switch into XP mode and install a XP-compatible VM to host another installation of Windows 7? Like standing in between 2 mirrors facing each other...
Really people, don't you see what's happening here?
Ideal sandbox would be just another os running in the vm.
Not sure MS will get this right, but if they did, this will turn into quite great security initiative.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
BTW, XP SP3 running as a virtual machine under 7 *will* be dog, doggy, dog dog dog SLOW. MS pooches it again!
Only if you're using a crap system. Given that the vast majority of programs are still designed to run on a single core, even a person with a crap dual core system shouldn't have much of an issue, especially given how well Win 7 runs on older hardware. Anyone with a quad-core system might see a brief moment of lag and that would probably be it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Some of the userspace certainly does, but some is also a lot slower - searches always take longer even though there's a lot less installed on my Linux partition
What type of searching? I have always been disappointed at how slow Windows Search is, in fact I find that running locate/grep in cygwin to be much faster than the native windows search (or even that windows desktop search that outlook tricked me into installing).
Secondly, there are absolutely things that the Linux kernel is faster at. Just as one example, an application with multiple processes is much faster in Linux than in Windows, to the point where anyone who cares about performance will convert the processes into threads when porting Unix software to Windows.
NT is very "creaky and old". It's still the same old crapware kernel with the stolen (broken) BSD TCP/IP stack that Cutler threw together in 1991. It's an inviolate lump of undocumented binary that breaks if you try to change anything! POSIX compliant? MS wouldn't know POSIX if it was anally inserted!
MS haven't had a viable product since the mid-90s, and the situation's just getting worse. All the real programmers left a long time ago! The current bunch of code-monkeys are totally clueless.
Windows - a poor proprietary client for a UNIX world
Sound really secure and user friendly system to me :)
You don't know what you don't know.
DOS/Win3.1 => Win32 via Win32s was ugly. Win9x to WinNT kernel was ugly. Mac OS 6/7/8/9 to 10 was ugly. 32-bit to 64-bit is still ugly. This - this will be ugly, too. The alternative for M$ is to write off those who need XP (nyet, Windows NT-era tech) compatibility, and that doesn't let them release a new OS. They killed XP pre-maturely, released another Windows ME (Vista) and have adopted a (proven) winning transition strategy finally. Talk about the school of hard knocks for a leading company? Holy cow.
I think it's more likely that Microsoft realised that very many companies currently running XP are simply not going to upgrade any time soon, be it due to financial or technical issues. Including XP in a VM is simply a lifeline for Microsoft to get companies to upgrade and keep XP compatibility.
What is strange is that Microsoft didn't do this before, with Vista, from the get go. They would have saved themselves an awful amount of ridicule in the press. I think the reason is that Microsoft is so full of marketing types arguing with one another over the best way to sell the latest OS to customers that the faction that was arguing about not including a VM for XP compatibility was the best way to get people to upgrade (i.e. by denying that there is anything wrong with Vista) won the last time around, and this time around they're part of the "restructuring effort" after MS sales declined for the first time ever.
Microsoft is truly desperate. They would sell you Mac OSX if they could, and the postive side of this is that Microsoft will actually have to compete in the real world, also for the first time in some 20 years.
First, my comment about how fast Win 7 is on older hardware is NOT from MS, but from people who have installed the Win 7 beta on 3-5 year old LAPTOPS and been amazed at how fast it was.
Second, I HAVE run Linux in a VM on XP and that was on a crappy 1.5 GHz processor with only half a gig of ram 7 years ago. Surprisingly, it actually didn't run all that slow. It definitely wasn't the fastest, but again -- half a gig of ram, so after I gave Linux 256 MB to run on, I only had the minimum specs for ram on XP left.
I run only Linux on my laptop and only Windows on my desktop (the desktop is for gaming). Until game companies start supporting Linux (or some billionaire gives a massive donation to the WINE team for them to go into hyperspeed), I'll always have to have a copy of Windows. Win 7 64-bit actually IS good. It runs just about every program I've thrown at it, sometimes with a work around (Icewind Dale has to be run in windowed mode or you get some weird graphics glitches that make the game nauseating to play). It looks good, the new taskbar is actually very handy as well as very clean looking, and it's fast. With the virtual XP in it, Win 7 64-bit should run every last bit of software I own without a hitch (anything old enough to not run right has low enough requirements that my gaming rig won't be affected by it). Face it, Microsoft is actually making something worth buying for once. Quit whining and accept it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
For search, I was referring to the the indexed search tools which ship with Vista as opposed to those installed by default on my Linux boxes. The Vista one is faster by a noticable margin even though the index is larger.
For performance, you're talking about a scheduler design decision here: NT embraced and encouraged kernel-level threads in its core design, and bases scheduling decisions on threads (this makes a certain degree of sense, as context switching between threads is slightly faster than between processes, and creating new threads is less expensive than creating new processes). I'm not sure about Vista and up (NT 6.x) but the 5.x kernel (2000, XP, 2003) will certainly allocate more processor time to applications which use many threads. I wonder, however, whether such a hightly multi-threaded application on NT would perform as well as expected on Linux? Not saying it wouldn't but you didn't specify that it would; you simply picked an example of a case which supported your argument by using the preferred programming paradigm of Linux (POSIX, really), which is not preferred on Windows.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I hadn't heard of this; it sounds pretty good and I'll check it out. Does anybody know whether the sleep is as "deep" (i.e. can I leave my laptop in sleep for 48 hours without draining the battery) and whether it handles ACPI events (closing or opening the laptop lid, wake-on-LAN, or similar)? I'll take a look anyhow; lack of a suspend state is a real annoyance with a student laptop.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Exchange is the biggest piece of shit. I have just started at a new branch of this big global company, and it is Exchange that has given us the biggest grief, everyday it was not working and we struggled for an hour to get it working, sometimes having to put in the server details because it lost them. We all had to fall back on google mail, which worked everytime. Even now, when it mostly works, it won't pick up contact I have sent mail to before, and fill them in. I hate this POS.
Nah, I dont need the assistance. VPCs VM capabilities were promised to be able to be (and eventually) integrated seamlessly into Windows and MacOSX. Read the numerous press releases (ya need to read them all for the full picture).
Of course, all but Windows versions were then shortly dropped - even though Microsoft allowed Connectix to promise - in Microsoft's Press Release "We look forward to working with Microsoft to provide a seamless product and support transition for our current customers and believe that Microsoft will produce the very best-in-class virtualization solutions on Windows and Macintosh platforms for a long time to come."
That too was incorrect - as incorrect as this "Microsoft will continue development of virtual machine solutions from Connectix and will integrate them into the Windows and Mac product portfolios."
There are plenty more such promises on the tech sections and other areas as well - which they backpedalled on rather quickly...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
"The VM runs in a ***modified*** version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system ***as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself***." doesn't sound like the protections you get in a regular VM ...
Even extremely high I/O. You can make VMs use physical discs directly, and even virtual discs aren't that bad. As a general rule, if a cluster of VMs doesn't suit your I/O need, you need to pull a Google or an Ebay and wrap a custom solution anyway. Many of the biggest clusters of databases in the world (note I did -not- say the actual biggests) run in datacenters fully virtualized, and it works fine. So real time graphic hardware acceleration (which you did mention) is really the only bottleneck now...once thats fixed, we'll want to start considering having all desktops as VMs, too, for ease of support, management, and restores (many businesses are already considering that, since they dont need hardware graphics)
Your are correct.
However I am not sure that there are not still situations where extremely high I/O is better served by hardware.
The lines are blurring much more now between virtual and purely hardware driven systems.
If you have worked with virtual machines as much as I have then you know this.
VM's are great sandbox's...
I will take a freely destructible and instantly restore-able virtual XP license anytime.
Thank you very much.
Instantly restore-able?
I have built a fully restore-able Virtual Machine network using a torrent based file sharing system.
The system was built for a computer school that uses terabytes of Microsoft VM's to teach the classes they offer.
They had a need to restore\reload\update hundreds of clean VM's every week, even daily.
This system uses every computer and network resources available at peak effectiveness.
It was free to implement with the exception of a high capacity filer.
A gigabyte network was not necessary.
The system was designed to "restore" all VM's accross hunderds of machines or a -single machine- very quickly by referencing clean copies of the all VM's on a separate hidden and locked hard drive located in all the machines on the network.
The Primary tracker, uTorrent, also references its only clean copy. (until an updated torrent \ VM image is made)
The system uses two components
1. uTorrent as both a client and server
2. a simple securely hosted web page to host the torrent files across all machines.
Restoring hundreds, adding or updating VM's is very easy.
(updating is as simple as creating a new torrent with the same name and sharing the new torrent out to all machines)
Restoring is as simple as logging in to each machine as the admin and launching uTorrent which does a CRC check and only downloads the changes made in the VM image file. (usually less than 20%)
Restoring or updating a 12GB VM to a clean state takes less than 15 minutes. (only re-downloading the broken or changed pieces)
Adding Virtual Machines across multiple machines reduces P2P copy\restore\update time and is 100% error free.
This took a job, that was prone to error becuase P2P file transfer is not 100% error free, that could take 4 hours down to about 20 minutes.
And it is 100% perfect because of the torrent systems built-in error correction...
Outside of Hardware failure every student gets a perfectly working set of VM's to work from every time and anytime... about 500GB worth.
It's still the same old crapware kernel with the stolen (broken) BSD TCP/IP stack that Cutler threw together in 1991.
Wrong. The BSD TCP/IP stack was replaced in NT 5.0. (And it is not "stolen" to use the code under the terms with which it is provided.)
It's an inviolate lump of undocumented binary that breaks if you try to change anything!
Again wrong. Simply because you do not have the source code does not make it undocumented (and the Microsoft API documentation is arguably superior to anything you'll find in the Unix world, with the only real competition coming from Apple).
POSIX compliant? MS wouldn't know POSIX if it was anally inserted!
Do you ever tire of being so wrong?
MS haven't had a viable product since the mid-90s, and the situation's just getting worse.
I'd love to be in the situation of having over 90% market share, making gazillions of dollars, and fielding a product that's both good enough for your average user and continually getting better. What a horrible place to be in.
All the real programmers left a long time ago! The current bunch of code-monkeys are totally clueless.
Speaking from personal experience, as I know a good number of people who work for Microsoft: bahahaahahahaha. Wipe off the cheeto crumbs, dude.
Windows - a poor proprietary client for a UNIX world
And if you UNIX maggots hadn't been such bleeding retards, we might have gotten a Plan 9 world and all been the better for it. As it is, you want a UNIX world you're never going to get, and I'm damn glad for it.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And by contrast, it works fine for companies like us (a medium sized enterprise, with 14000 people) and it works fine for companies like Microsoft (a multi-national conglomerate with hundreds of thousands of users).
I usually refrain from saying this, but have you ever considered that maybe you just set it up wrong. Microsoft products, like any other, can fall apart like a house of cards just like Sendmail when misconfigured.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The BSD TCP/IP stack was thrown out three years ago.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That's what they're goddamn fucking doing, FUCKER.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".