nd writes "Kevin Lawton, author of the popular x86
emulator Bochs, has
launched an open source project to create an application
with functionality similar to that of VMware.
Of course, he will need some help to get freemware (the
title of this project) going. "
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
VMWare is not a software emulator at all. It is a processor virtualizer, within which you can run Windows95/98/NT. You still need to pay for the operating system on top of the $300 for VMWare. For Windows NT Workstation (probably the most common thing run in VMWare), it's another $295 last I checked.
Now, if freemware gets off the ground, and Wine gets more stable, than with a little tweaking, you might be able to take freemware, run freedos in it, and run a modified version of Wine on top of it, and have a completely Free Windows clone running in a window on your Linux box:-).
--
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Always seem to be catching up
by
Skyshadow
·
· Score: 3
This is kind of an unfortunate thing we have going on here.
I mean, I've started to notice that OSS projects always seem to be trailing boldly behind closed source stuff. It's not that I don't see the value of an open source vmware-type project, but it's sort of upsetting that (lately, at least) we're always playing catch-up to ideas that companies have had.
I wonder if open source somehow doesn't foster originality...
----
-- Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
GPL still the most popular license? Yes
by
HoserHead
·
· Score: 2
Check freshmeat for proof. Most of the software announced there is licensed under the GPL; indeed, stuff not under the GPL is the exception.
"Headlining" software is simply software which big companies are releasing as Open Source, and isn't necessarily Free Software - an example is the Apple source license, which allows Apple to terminate your rights to the code - a decidedly non-free aspect of the license.
In any case, most [new] free software projects aren't announced on Slashdot, but most of them do use the GPL.
What license and how "free"
by
HoserHead
·
· Score: 3
technology will be carried over from the bochs project to the freemware project. I am currently exploring what needs to be done license-wise to bring the device emulation from bochs to the open source freemware project.
Well, everywhere he says "open source." I hope he goes BSD-esque or GPL, but I'm afraid that it'll be something incompatible with GPL (and thus making it difficult for other authors to use it, seeing as GPL is by far the most popular license for new Free Software.)
Obviously the author of bochs can do whatever he sees fit with his code, include licensing it as part of freemware under whatever license it uses, and we hope he goes with a Good choice (even if it is incompatible with GPL or the vast majority of other licenses (ie, if it's not GPL or BSD/X type license), if it's Free Software it will be ok).
I couldn't find any discussion about what license they are talking about using. Bochs, for example, isn't OSS by any stretch of the imagination. (See the license for bochs here.)
If it is not going to be free software, why would anyone want to help for free?
-- SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Free software and originality are orthogonal. There are incredibly original free software projects and incredibly non-original ones. It's also a good idea to remember that originality and quality/usefulness are orthogonal; the first people to think of something aren't necessarily the ones to make the most useful implementation of it. Not that I have anything against originality.:-)
It's also worth noting that VMware isn't particularly original either--it's the first piece of software that does what it specifically does, but the concept is old. VMware just happened to be the first group to apply it to Intel (I think most other people weren't interested since (a) it's a major pain because of limitations of Intel hardware and (b) for most legacy apps, OS-level emulation is a better long-term goal, although [ perhaps ] more difficult in the short-term. If you think Wine is a resource hog, imagine running a 32-MB virtual machine on your computer.:-) ) I'd just like to say that there's no shame in being unoriginal as long as you're good and unoriginal. Obviously since they just announced the project we can't judge whether it's good or not...
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Hmm. Do you want people using Linux or do you want proprietary companies writing software for it? In the second case, you're correct that this is a proble, but I find it hard to believe that anyone will be 'driven away' as a user because people insist on writing free clones of closed programs.
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
VMware should have been Open Source
by
David+Jao
·
· Score: 4
Some people here say that since VMware is a good product, the authors are justified in keeping their software proprietary. Some even go so far as to say that a free VMware clone would be stealing well-deserved money from the authors of VMware.
I could not disagree more. Furthermore, I will be the first to way that I would pay the $99 student price for a GPL'd VMware. I am not against selling software. I am against the common practice whereby companies withhold (i.e. steal) millions of dollars of value from society by keeping their software proprietary.
I will not buy VMware, even though the product is worth more to me than the asking price. It seems obvious to me that if everyone who wants VMware puts their money into freemware instead, there would be ample money to fund a superior Open Source replacement. If you think VMware is a valuable contribution to society, then how much would an Open Source replacement be worth? Answer: much, much more.
Since I emphasize societal benefit so much in this post, a lot of you out there might accuse me of being socialist, and, by hidden implication, anti-capitalist. Well, I've got news for you: Capitalism is socialism, and socialism is capitalism. Folks, that isn't ideology, that's a proven mathematical theorem. Specifically, the first and second welfare theorems of microeconomics state that:
A free market always maximizes net societal welfare,
Any state of maximalization of net societal welfare is achievable through a free market.
I know that socialism/capitalism is not directly on topic but I just wanted to pre-emptively fend off the knee-jerk attack that since I'm against proprietary software I must be against entrepreneurism, capitalism, and the American dream.
By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, the proprietary software market is based on a copyright monopoly, hence is not a free market economy, and that's why this market sucks from both a capitalist and socialist standpoint.
You've made some assumptions...
by
Booker
·
· Score: 2
The hard-core GNU/GPL free software people aren't necessarily interested in "market acceptance" or being a "major player." They're not worried about the cash flow of companies. They want software that works, that they can play with, that has source available, that is free. So, if they see a good idea in proprietary software, and set out to create a free version of that functionality, they're not hurting their cause in any way.
You seem to equate being a major player in the desktop market with having proprietary, non-free software available for the platform... I don't agree with that logic.
I too, might come across as a heathen, but I'd have to agree here.
Linux doesn't need another x86 emulator, another dos emulator, or the ability to run windows 98/nt apps. Linux needs to be strengthened in the GUI areas (whether you like GNOME or KDE IS irrelevant), and possibly in the business applications arena, though with StarOffice, Applix, and WordPerfect there are already some good applications out there. (though I'm at a fundamental disagreement with Corel's porting of ver 8 using wine)
Intel boxen are increadibly cheap today, and getting something that can run Windows faster than VMware on a Pentium 233 on Linux shouldn't cost more than $500 all said and done. That $500 buys a decent machine, too (which would run linux very well... erm... wait...)
-- I used to think printing on on Unix sucked. Then I figured
it out. Printing on Unix *does* suck. Like a Kirby.
Open source projects have far greater flexibility than closed source applications. With tens, hundreds, or even thousands of hackers learning the code, and providing additions and optimizations, then you will end up with a better quality product.
I do think that this isn't actually a very good project idea though. It seems to me that the creator of BOCHS, an extremely slow emulator which is unlikely to be useful for anything, has just seen his hopes and dreams for the project completely blown out of the water by a vastly superior product. I am rather suspicious of his motivations in setting up an open source project which aims to do little more than undermine the vmWare product, and thus vmWare's market.
If we want to be constructive, we should be instead lobbying vmWare, promoting the benefits of making their product open source on the Linux platform. Personally I have little use for the product unless they can get games working well (though I suspect the game companies will catch on to the value of the Linux market before that happens).
If the Linux community can't convince vmWare to free up the source code to their product - even for non-commercial use only (a really good idea guys), then perhaps they would like to reconsider their asking price for non-commercial use. Even without source code, providing the product freely to thousands of Linux users will gain great exposure and thousands of bug reporters.
If they opened up the source, then they might get some really useful help with getting DirectX applications working well.
A bit of a burble, but I think I made all the right noises.
Be careful about this project - what's the guys real motivation? If he loved open source so much, why didn't he free up the source to BOCHS?
Just off the top of my head, here are some reasons to run VMware etc:
- cost - much cheaper to add $300 VMware and extra RAM than buy a new machine - any decent machine costs more than $450
- flexibility - run bleeding edge Linux/BSD/other kernels in a VM, hosted by production Linux installation. Run more than one guest OS at once.
- power usage and heat - run several OSs on one box without increasing heat dissipation - reduce electricity usage and help avoid global warming (seriously - PCs use a big chunk of the US electricity production!)
- tech support - boot a VM that is an exact replica of the one the user is running, without disturbing your normal session.
- Windows development - run a Windows NT guest OS to do email, another to do development (will sometimes crash but who cares), and a Win98 one and Win95 one for testing. If you hate Windows, remember that Linux will be the most stable host OS for VMware, most likely, and you are thereby introducing Linux onto a Windows developer's desktop - can't be all bad. And remember that this will support a Linux guest OS for when they decide they must port to Linux:)
- desk space - many of our developers have two PCs, one Windows and one Linux, which is a waste of desk space.
- testing small networks on single machine - providing you have enough RAM, you could run 5 or ten VMs at once, enough to test a small network of systems - ideal for testing client/server setups using different OSs without consuming a lot of hardware. My company makes network management software, so if some of the VMs could boot Linux router code we could test a complete network on a laptop. Handy for when our testers want to work from home rather than suffer up to 1.5 hours commute each way in London.
- research - develop and test new network protocols, or Beowulf apps, on a single machine
- Year 2000 testing - run a guest OS with its clock turned forward
- workload partitioning on large SMP systems - run different major apps, e.g. SAP R/3 and Oracle Applications, in different VMs with (hopefully) little impact of one on the other. Standard practice in mainframes and copied using hardware by Sun, HP, Amdahl, etc. Unix has traditionally been quite poor at workload partitioning - would be better to see it in the OS, but this is a useful stopgap. Very handy for server consolidation, where many small servers get merged into one or two huge servers.
- demonstrations - would be useful to demo distributed client/server type software, including showing how the system recovers from a (guest) OS/hardware crash, simulated by halting the VM.
It's worth remembering that the IT world is more complex than your own particular environment. Also, if Linux+VMware can be used to 'surround' Windows environments by running them in a more flexible way, it's only a short step to a more Linux-based environment.
VM/370, the IBM mainframe equivalent of VMware, was once about to be canned (it was an unofficial project done in R&D labs, a bit like Unix at AT&T), when the suits discovered that it was being used by the MVS team (MVS being the main operating system then and now for IBM mainframes) for development and testing, running several MVS instances on a single mainframe. Once they realised that MVS, although notionally a competitor to VM, was in fact depending on it, they kept the VM project going, and it's now available as VM/390.
Calm down. RedHat is not the Great Satan, at least not now. RedHat simply donated server space to Kevin Lawton and the freemware project.
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
If anything ever becomes of freemware, it will place competitive pressure on VMWare to compete. For starters, they might consider an accelerated video driver (easy to do), better performance (there's always a way), and Windows sound/mouse drivers that talk directly to X11 rather than through the hardware emulation layer (this would remove the mouse pointer weirdness). Making Windows windows integrate with the X11 desktop would also be nice (sort of like OS/2's seamless feature); this is actually not that hard to do.
That said, VMWare is a very nice product, but freed software is always better. =) And please DON'T tell me to go spend $300. I'd much rather use freed software and donate that money worthy causes.
-- --jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
while i do agree that a Free Software/opensource alternitive is a good idea, we are also driving away alot of people from Linux, everytime someone makes a good product for Linux it gets opensource alternative and everyone uses that. In the end it wont make people turn to programming open source programs but instead drive them away from the platform.
I agree all software should be free... but sometimes, like with the Harmony project for the Qt lib, i feel we are ripping off people sometimes...
-- Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp)
"We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way"
sab@clara.net
personaly i dislike the current comercilastaion (sorrie i will learn to spell one day) thats happening to Linux, but i do think that in the same way we have the right to writing things under the GPL and expect the big copmanys not to rip us off on it, cant little companys expect us not to rip them off for what they slaved over? sorrie if i make no sense, i am not great with words
-- Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp)
"We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way"
sab@clara.net
GPL still the most popular license?
by
linuchristo
·
· Score: 2
Linux kernel gets headlines and it's GPL.
Survival of the fittest (law of the jungle)
by
rakjr
·
· Score: 2
Open or closed, it doesn't matter. The religious will make their choice based on beliefs. The uniformed will follow the media maggets. But in the end, choices will be made based on function where it matters. Office Star may be free, but it is a hog which blows up. The price is right, but it has not been more stable than Word. Look at what took place between Lotus, Quattro, and Excel. OR better yet, look what happened with MS's Hotmail. Sooner or later either a good product wins out or the media crowns its own king.
Novell is not still around because of their advertising and neither is Linux. They are products which have proven to be more stable in many respects.
-- In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than
this, look for me there...
Not only do I have a job, I'm currently testing VMWare at work to run Win98 under Linux.
I've been trying very hard to get bring Linux into the company as a viable solution for many applications over the past year, and while I've managed to get it setup as a couple DNS servers, print servers and my desktop OS, it's still pretty slow going.
For them to accept Linux I have to "prove" its a viable OS on all counts. Stability, speed, inter-communications with other OS's and networks etc.
One problem I've been facing is that against my better advice they've decided to implement Micrsoft Exchange as their internal and internet mail system with Outlook on all the clients.
While this works great for the Windows NT networked workstations, it's practically left out our dos-Novell clients, X-stations running off Unix servers etc and my Linux workstation.
Luckily basic email is covered by standard POP3 and SMTP (though trying to log into exchange with a pop3 client is just plain weird, whoever heard of Domain name/Domain User name/Mailbox Name as a login name to a pop3 host, glad we dont expect users to setup their own email software), but now they've decided to move all calendaring and scheduling functions to Outlook and Exchange as well.
This wouldn't be a problem either except that they are also currently afraid to setup the web interface to the exchange server (I guess showing them how instable NT is compared to other NOS's backfired on me in this case)
For me to continue to be allowed to run Linux as my desktop in a Windows based company I have to show that I can be compatible with everyone else. They aren't going to issue me another computer and I dont have the desk space for one anyways. That either leaves me with the choice of moving back to Windows alltogether which for me is out of the question if at all possible, dual booting between Linux and Winx duable but a pain the butt just to check email and my calendar, or running an app like VMWare with a virtual 95 machine, which so far has worked with flying colors.
Granted on my AMD K6 -200 the 95 machine is a bit slow itself but it's still workable, and after installing 128MB ram on the system by keeping VMWare running in the background it doesn't effect my Linux applications hardly at all.
Now I just have to bring up the virtual machine to check and adjust the calendar and then minimize it to get back to my real work, and since I like windows based Pegasus email software better than another other email client around it still lets me run that as my client of choice.
Also it allows me to quickly manage the NT servers and users from the Win95 session, somthing thats kind of hard to do with the smb software currently available for Linux.
So software like this most definetly has it's uses, and can also be a great tool to bring Linux into areas that are reluctant to even try it out, even more so when they come out with an NT version that you can run virtual Linux machines on. In this case you can safly show off the benefits of Linux safely in NT only company's allowing them to test it out first hand without having to dedicate a computer to it. That might not be an issue for users who find 3-500 dollar computers, but I've yet to work for a big company that will even consider such a thing. Instead they've all "standardized" on the latest models of Compaq, Dell and Gateway who can easily run into the $1500 to $5000 dollar range. In these cases purchasing an extra computer for what is to them an untested OS would be out of the question.
Always seem to be catching up
by
Phill+Hugo
·
· Score: 2
This is one of the good things about Free Software. You don't have mistakes that noone needs. The GIMP worked becuase Adobe already proved it would. VMWare and IBM have done the hard work with VM monitors and now the open source commty can invest programmers knowing that it is a fair cause.
Once the initial project is underway it doesn't take long before the open project excells the closed one.
Finally, stop complaining about this. If you think the free software world lags then shut up about that, learn to code and write some new programs. I think we'd all prefer that to a moaner who do little else?
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, I think freemware is a great idea. Such a great idea in fact, that I've decided to create a freeware clone of Bochs.
Watch this space for future announcements.
jerodd wrote:
:-).
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
VMWare is not a software emulator at all. It is a processor virtualizer, within which you can run Windows95/98/NT. You still need to pay for the operating system on top of the $300 for VMWare. For Windows NT Workstation (probably the most common thing run in VMWare), it's another $295 last I checked.
Now, if freemware gets off the ground, and Wine gets more stable, than with a little tweaking, you might be able to take freemware, run freedos in it, and run a modified version of Wine on top of it, and have a completely Free Windows clone running in a window on your Linux box
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I mean, I've started to notice that OSS projects always seem to be trailing boldly behind closed source stuff. It's not that I don't see the value of an open source vmware-type project, but it's sort of upsetting that (lately, at least) we're always playing catch-up to ideas that companies have had.
I wonder if open source somehow doesn't foster originality...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"Headlining" software is simply software which big companies are releasing as Open Source, and isn't necessarily Free Software - an example is the Apple source license, which allows Apple to terminate your rights to the code - a decidedly non-free aspect of the license.
In any case, most [new] free software projects aren't announced on Slashdot, but most of them do use the GPL.
Obviously the author of bochs can do whatever he sees fit with his code, include licensing it as part of freemware under whatever license it uses, and we hope he goes with a Good choice (even if it is incompatible with GPL or the vast majority of other licenses (ie, if it's not GPL or BSD/X type license), if it's Free Software it will be ok).
If it is not going to be free software, why would anyone want to help for free?
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Free software and originality are orthogonal. There are incredibly original free software projects and incredibly non-original ones. It's also a good idea to remember that originality and quality/usefulness are orthogonal; the first people to think of something aren't necessarily the ones to make the most useful implementation of it. Not that I have anything against originality. :-)
:-) )
It's also worth noting that VMware isn't particularly original either--it's the first piece of software that does what it specifically does, but the concept is old. VMware just happened to be the first group to apply it to Intel (I think most other people weren't interested since (a) it's a major pain because of limitations of Intel hardware and (b) for most legacy apps, OS-level emulation is a better long-term goal, although [ perhaps ] more difficult in the short-term. If you think Wine is a resource hog, imagine running a 32-MB virtual machine on your computer.
I'd just like to say that there's no shame in being unoriginal as long as you're good and unoriginal. Obviously since they just announced the project we can't judge whether it's good or not...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Hmm. Do you want people using Linux or do you want proprietary companies writing software for it? In the second case, you're correct that this is a proble, but I find it hard to believe that anyone will be 'driven away' as a user because people insist on writing free clones of closed programs.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I could not disagree more. Furthermore, I will be the first to way that I would pay the $99 student price for a GPL'd VMware. I am not against selling software. I am against the common practice whereby companies withhold (i.e. steal) millions of dollars of value from society by keeping their software proprietary.
I will not buy VMware, even though the product is worth more to me than the asking price. It seems obvious to me that if everyone who wants VMware puts their money into freemware instead, there would be ample money to fund a superior Open Source replacement. If you think VMware is a valuable contribution to society, then how much would an Open Source replacement be worth? Answer: much, much more.
Since I emphasize societal benefit so much in this post, a lot of you out there might accuse me of being socialist, and, by hidden implication, anti-capitalist. Well, I've got news for you: Capitalism is socialism, and socialism is capitalism. Folks, that isn't ideology, that's a proven mathematical theorem. Specifically, the first and second welfare theorems of microeconomics state that:
- A free market always maximizes net societal welfare,
- Any state of maximalization of net societal welfare is achievable through a free market.
I know that socialism/capitalism is not directly on topic but I just wanted to pre-emptively fend off the knee-jerk attack that since I'm against proprietary software I must be against entrepreneurism, capitalism, and the American dream.By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, the proprietary software market is based on a copyright monopoly, hence is not a free market economy, and that's why this market sucks from both a capitalist and socialist standpoint.
The hard-core GNU/GPL free software people aren't necessarily interested in "market acceptance" or being a "major player." They're not worried about the cash flow of companies. They want software that works, that they can play with, that has source available, that is free. So, if they see a good idea in proprietary software, and set out to create a free version of that functionality, they're not hurting their cause in any way.
You seem to equate being a major player in the desktop market with having proprietary, non-free software available for the platform... I don't agree with that logic.
I too, might come across as a heathen, but I'd have to agree here.
Linux doesn't need another x86 emulator, another dos emulator, or the ability to run windows 98/nt apps. Linux needs to be strengthened in the GUI areas (whether you like GNOME or KDE IS irrelevant), and possibly in the business applications arena, though with StarOffice, Applix, and WordPerfect there are already some good applications out there. (though I'm at a fundamental disagreement with Corel's porting of ver 8 using wine)
Intel boxen are increadibly cheap today, and getting something that can run Windows faster than VMware on a Pentium 233 on Linux shouldn't cost more than $500 all said and done. That $500 buys a decent machine, too (which would run linux very well... erm... wait...)
I used to think printing on on Unix sucked. Then I figured it out. Printing on Unix *does* suck. Like a Kirby.
Open source projects have far greater flexibility than closed source applications. With tens, hundreds, or even thousands of hackers learning the code, and providing additions and optimizations, then you will end up with a better quality product.
I do think that this isn't actually a very good project idea though. It seems to me that the creator of BOCHS, an extremely slow emulator which is unlikely to be useful for anything, has just seen his hopes and dreams for the project completely blown out of the water by a vastly superior product. I am rather suspicious of his motivations in setting up an open source project which aims to do little more than undermine the vmWare product, and thus vmWare's market.
If we want to be constructive, we should be instead lobbying vmWare, promoting the benefits of making their product open source on the Linux platform. Personally I have little use for the product unless they can get games working well (though I suspect the game companies will catch on to the value of the Linux market before that happens).
If the Linux community can't convince vmWare to free up the source code to their product - even for non-commercial use only (a really good idea guys), then perhaps they would like to reconsider their asking price for non-commercial use. Even without source code, providing the product freely to thousands of Linux users will gain great exposure and thousands of bug reporters.
If they opened up the source, then they might get some really useful help with getting DirectX applications working well.
A bit of a burble, but I think I made all the right noises.
Be careful about this project - what's the guys real motivation? If he loved open source so much, why didn't he free up the source to BOCHS?
Just off the top of my head, here are some reasons to run VMware etc:
:)
- cost - much cheaper to add $300 VMware and extra RAM than buy a new machine - any decent machine costs more than $450
- flexibility - run bleeding edge Linux/BSD/other kernels in a VM, hosted by production Linux installation. Run more than one guest OS at once.
- power usage and heat - run several OSs on one box without increasing heat dissipation - reduce electricity usage and help avoid global warming (seriously - PCs use a big chunk of the US electricity production!)
- tech support - boot a VM that is an exact replica of the one the user is running, without disturbing your normal session.
- Windows development - run a Windows NT guest OS to do email, another to do development (will sometimes crash but who cares), and a Win98 one and Win95 one for testing. If you hate Windows, remember that Linux will be the most stable host OS for VMware, most likely, and you are thereby introducing Linux onto a Windows developer's desktop - can't be all bad. And remember that this will support a Linux guest OS for when they decide they must port to Linux
- desk space - many of our developers have two PCs, one Windows and one Linux, which is a waste of desk space.
- testing small networks on single machine - providing you have enough RAM, you could run 5 or ten VMs at once, enough to test a small network of systems - ideal for testing client/server setups using different OSs without consuming a lot of hardware. My company makes network management software, so if some of the VMs could boot Linux router code we could test a complete network on a laptop. Handy for when our testers want to work from home rather than suffer up to 1.5 hours commute each way in London.
- research - develop and test new network protocols, or Beowulf apps, on a single machine
- Year 2000 testing - run a guest OS with its clock turned forward
- workload partitioning on large SMP systems - run different major apps, e.g. SAP R/3 and Oracle Applications, in different VMs with (hopefully) little impact of one on the other. Standard practice in mainframes and copied using hardware by Sun, HP, Amdahl, etc. Unix has traditionally been quite poor at workload partitioning - would be better to see it in the OS, but this is a useful stopgap. Very handy for server consolidation, where many small servers get merged into one or two huge servers.
- demonstrations - would be useful to demo distributed client/server type software, including showing how the system recovers from a (guest) OS/hardware crash, simulated by halting the VM.
It's worth remembering that the IT world is more complex than your own particular environment. Also, if Linux+VMware can be used to 'surround' Windows environments by running them in a more flexible way, it's only a short step to a more Linux-based environment.
VM/370, the IBM mainframe equivalent of VMware, was once about to be canned (it was an unofficial project done in R&D labs, a bit like Unix at AT&T), when the suits discovered that it was being used by the MVS team (MVS being the main operating system then and now for IBM mainframes) for development and testing, running several MVS instances on a single mainframe. Once they realised that MVS, although notionally a competitor to VM, was in fact depending on it, they kept the VM project going, and it's now available as VM/390.
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
If anything ever becomes of freemware, it will place competitive pressure on VMWare to compete. For starters, they might consider an accelerated video driver (easy to do), better performance (there's always a way), and Windows sound/mouse drivers that talk directly to X11 rather than through the hardware emulation layer (this would remove the mouse pointer weirdness). Making Windows windows integrate with the X11 desktop would also be nice (sort of like OS/2's seamless feature); this is actually not that hard to do.
That said, VMWare is a very nice product, but freed software is always better. =) And please DON'T tell me to go spend $300. I'd much rather use freed software and donate that money worthy causes.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
while i do agree that a Free Software/opensource alternitive is a good idea, we are also driving away alot of people from Linux, everytime someone makes a good product for Linux it gets opensource alternative and everyone uses that. In the end it wont make people turn to programming open source programs but instead drive them away from the platform.
I agree all software should be free... but sometimes, like with the Harmony project for the Qt lib, i feel we are ripping off people sometimes...
Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp) "We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way" sab@clara.net
personaly i dislike the current comercilastaion (sorrie i will learn to spell one day) thats happening to Linux, but i do think that in the same way we have the right to writing things under the GPL and expect the big copmanys not to rip us off on it, cant little companys expect us not to rip them off for what they slaved over? sorrie if i make no sense, i am not great with words
Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp) "We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way" sab@clara.net
Linux kernel gets headlines and it's GPL.
Open or closed, it doesn't matter. The religious will make their choice based on beliefs. The uniformed will follow the media maggets. But in the end, choices will be made based on function where it matters. Office Star may be free, but it is a hog which blows up. The price is right, but it has not been more stable than Word. Look at what took place between Lotus, Quattro, and Excel. OR better yet, look what happened with MS's Hotmail. Sooner or later either a good product wins out or the media crowns its own king.
Novell is not still around because of their advertising and neither is Linux. They are products which have proven to be more stable in many respects.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
Not only do I have a job, I'm currently testing VMWare at work to run Win98 under Linux.
I've been trying very hard to get bring Linux into the company as a viable solution for many applications over the past year, and while I've managed to get it setup as a couple DNS servers, print servers and my desktop OS, it's still pretty slow going.
For them to accept Linux I have to "prove" its a viable OS on all counts. Stability, speed, inter-communications with other OS's and networks etc.
One problem I've been facing is that against my better advice they've decided to implement Micrsoft Exchange as their internal and internet mail system with Outlook on all the clients.
While this works great for the Windows NT networked workstations, it's practically left out our dos-Novell clients, X-stations running off Unix servers etc and my Linux workstation.
Luckily basic email is covered by standard POP3 and SMTP (though trying to log into exchange with a pop3 client is just plain weird, whoever heard of Domain name/Domain User name/Mailbox Name as a login name to a pop3 host, glad we dont expect users to setup their own email software), but now they've decided to move all calendaring and scheduling functions to Outlook and Exchange as well.
This wouldn't be a problem either except that they are also currently afraid to setup the web interface to the exchange server (I guess showing them how instable NT is compared to other NOS's backfired on me in this case)
For me to continue to be allowed to run Linux as my desktop in a Windows based company I have to show that I can be compatible with everyone else. They aren't going to issue me another computer and I dont have the desk space for one anyways. That either leaves me with the choice of moving back to Windows alltogether which for me is out of the question if at all possible, dual booting between Linux and Winx duable but a pain the butt just to check email and my calendar, or running an app like VMWare with a virtual 95 machine, which so far has worked with flying colors.
Granted on my AMD K6 -200 the 95 machine is a bit slow itself but it's still workable, and after installing 128MB ram on the system by keeping VMWare running in the background it doesn't effect my Linux applications hardly at all.
Now I just have to bring up the virtual machine to check and adjust the calendar and then minimize it to get back to my real work, and since I like windows based Pegasus email software better than another other email client around it still lets me run that as my client of choice.
Also it allows me to quickly manage the NT servers and users from the Win95 session, somthing thats kind of hard to do with the smb software currently available for Linux.
So software like this most definetly has it's uses, and can also be a great tool to bring Linux into areas that are reluctant to even try it out, even more so when they come out with an NT version that you can run virtual Linux machines on. In this case you can safly show off the benefits of Linux safely in NT only company's allowing them to test it out first hand without having to dedicate a computer to it. That might not be an issue for users who find 3-500 dollar computers, but I've yet to work for a big company that will even consider such a thing. Instead they've all "standardized" on the latest models of Compaq, Dell and Gateway who can easily run into the $1500 to $5000 dollar range. In these cases purchasing an extra computer for what is to them an untested OS would be out of the question.
This is one of the good things about Free Software. You don't have mistakes that noone needs. The GIMP worked becuase Adobe already proved it would. VMWare and IBM have done the hard work with VM monitors and now the open source commty can invest programmers knowing that it is a fair cause.
Once the initial project is underway it doesn't take long before the open project excells the closed one.
Finally, stop complaining about this. If you think the free software world lags then shut up about that, learn to code and write some new programs. I think we'd all prefer that to a moaner who do little else?
Phill