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VMware version 1.0 released
SkyHigH wrote in, along with quite a few others, to alert everyone to the fact, that yes, VM Ware v1.0 has been released-and it's Saturday, so the congestion should be lower.
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When I buy a machine with
PIII-500 and 256MB RAM, I'll
buy VMWare. So one more year
to wait.
> Y34|-| 814+C|-|!!!!!
:) and at the time it was cool tO wRitE lIkE tHiS which I never did. Which shows those who can crack and hack do so and those who don't well they type funny...
How eloquent. What's wrong anyway with these kids anyway? I used to remove copy protection from games (my first hack was at the age of 7 on a defective cromenco to get the mail/user accounts running, it's not much but still I'm proud of it
I haven't even seen any code from the VMware clone program, I think it will be a long time before its anywhere near the state that VMware itself is.
But, more power to 'em. I personally don't think intellectual properties should be non-free, but that's what's great about living in America, people can disagree with me, and occasionally, rarely, I'll go out and buy a damn good piece of software (Monkey Island I & II, Quake, and probably VMware)
and vmware is reallly slow running win98 on rh6.0 linux.
-anyone know any easy ways to make it run faster?
additionally, does directx work on this version? on the betas my video card aparetly was not supported and the vmware svga drivers for win32 also did not work.
-matt
and if a free version is not available and it is within my power/knowledge/expertise ... i'll make a free version.
-matt
(free is good, is it not the spirit of the linux movement?)
> ... and I'll help where I can (however, I am not a coder)
In other words you'll do a lot of talking and very little else?
In other words you'll do a lot of talking and very little else?
I'm not the person who responded, but I personnaly can code, would help if Bochs was free-er, considered helping Bochs seriously long ago, but like many other people, was sorry when Kevin announced that Bochs would be commercial, which made working for free unacceptable.
Wait. Kevin Lawton was investing important amount of money (huge for an individual, little for a company), and even created his own mono-person company much before VmWare started getting commercial ; he definitly started in/before 1993 or 1994.
This is why precisely why freemware sounds like a deliberate effort to undermine the work that VMWare has done. He is probably pissed.
I don't much like the idea of freemware (even the name is a blatant rip-off of vmware) either. However this type of thing isn't unique to linux, in fact it's much less common, and much less of a problem in Linux.
The only company I can think of that rips off even more stuff than the opensource community is Microsoft. And Microsoft does a good job at it too. The open source community may try, but their success rate isn't all that good.
A good example of this was the web browser. Netscape was getting too popular, so Microsoft released Internet Explorer. After many failed attempts, they came up with a version that was clearly better than Netscape, and now Netscape is slowly dying. During this time, there were attempts to make open source webbrowser. The best attempt was lynx. Not surprisingly, netscape is still the only decent browser for Linux.
(I'm aware netscape didn't come up with the idea for a web browser. They stole it from someone else. But they sure didn't steal it because there was a linux version.)
In short, if you come up with a good idea for a windows program, expect competition from Microsoft and about four other random companies. If your program is good enough, expect Microsoft to give it away.
Whatever, if this works under BeOS (which WMWare doesn't and has no plan for), I'm all for it ! I'll support whoever write one for BeOS, commercial, free, whatever !
Hey! You can't patent an idea! You patent an implementation of an Idea! Duh!
It is more than that ... is this the site where thousands of people claimed "we do not need M$'s crappy software anymore" and now ... I wonder ...
Why don't you make Bochs open source?
Kevin, as far as I'm concerned, this "freemware" (is it ream-ware?) is vaporware. Please, do us a favor, and don't pester about it on every VMWare announcement until you have something (sort-of) working. If you do, I'd like to know where I can download a copy.
Otherwise, what if your "freemware" never gets done, but it keeps people from buying VMWare? The manufacturer will go out of business, and we will have no VMWare available at all. Plus, people will see that the Linux market is a bunch of undermining cheapskates, and avoid it!
VMWare looks very cool for debugging OS-level code, too.
Yeah - it's pretty cool. I use it, not for running Windows, but for fiddling around with Linux kernel enhancements - having undoable drives rocks when you're playing with filesystem code :-)
And it beats the pants off BOCHS speed-wise.
Life is too short to buy things that I enjoy making.
> Er, steal the idea? The VMWare idea isn't even remotely new.
The idea itself is not new, but most people
thought it would be impossible to apply it to
the x86 architecture.
The fact that there is a living proof that this
is possible is no small information. Kevin's
claims that it is an old idea, and that ``VMware
has a respectable implementation'' of this idea
may be technically true but certainly do not give
credit where credit is due.
The problem is that the guy starting the freemware project has a commercial product that competes with VMWare in some markets. This makes many of us wonder if he has any intention of really taking freemware to the point that it is a useful replacement for VMWare, or if it is just a scheme to hinder VMWare to protect his product.
VMware for Linux installs as easily as any standard Linux application
bwaa hahahahahahahahah
I'm skeptical. A lot of people have tried, and failed, including many top x86 system programmers. What have you got that they didn't?
Take a look at the recent "Ask Slashdot". The guy talking about UltraSparcs and the bastard who says it's simple have it pretty much right.
Damn it, I wanna drink Coke, I demand that
I be given the source code and the formula
for Coke!!!!!. What if I drink Coke and
something broke??? I'm gonna be screwed out
of my $1.00. Death to closed source companies
all over the world!.
AFAIK... multiple monitors is supported by X.
Someone tell me if I'm wrong, but I doubt I am =).
Sorry I can't help you there - VCafe runs horrid under NT here, without Linux or VMWare in the way :)
Bill still gets your $$$ since you have to install Windows95 inside of the VMWare virtual machine.
Why would you want to play with DOS 3.3 again?
Really, the lower they price it, the more they will sell.
I just had an amusing thought....
They should leave the Windows NT version at $99, because heck, if you paid for NT, ($300 workstation, $900 server I think) you can afford it.
But they should make the Linux version $49, so that people using the free OS for cost reasons can get it cheap, Then, they need to provide it bundled with their own optimized Linux distribution... This would speed Linux adoption because they could have a Box on the shelf of the local CompUSA, OfficeMax, Etc. loudly proclaiming that you can run it with Windows, for only $59! (Windows not included) add a nice install engine that migrates existing Windows 95/98 setups, and provides a boot/reboot/uninstall menu, and Grandma could use it.
Yes, because I know nothing about engines.
Apparently you zealots don't understand that 99.99% of the population doesn't even know what source code is.
I think you're missing the point. Fsck windows.
I have Linux, FreeBSD, and (soon to have) Solaris x86 all running on my laptop at the same time - networked!
You can have a whole network of unix boxes inside of one box. I am a software developer and I think this is great. I evaluated vmware/Linux and bought it a day later.
This is what Alan Cox wrote:
Ok. Bad working. To be fast the emulator needs to rewrite blocks of code into native code (as some of the Alpha translators do, and Executor). The 386 to 386 translator intrigues me now, since it seems tricky but doable (page table write semantics are sick).
This is hardly a proof that the concept is practical. Had he been really convinced of the feasibility and marketability of the product, he would have done it himself.
news://news.redhat.com/redhat.projects.freemware
Ok, I noted that news.redhat.com is now alive again.
Why did Slashdot's upstream IP 209.232.138.214 go down for 5 hours on Friday May 14th?
This question doesn't belong here but it doesn't fit anywhere else on Slashdot.
Why not have a slashdot.org/Comments web page for discussing issues about Slashdot itself?
If you want/have to do your main work under linux and have to reboot everytime you need to edit a word document that somebody sent you, or look up something in an excel sheet that is on the net you usually will end up using windows as default.
I agree that getting crazy of being able to play games in a vmware box under linux does not make sense to me either (well, it shows the quality of the product), but VMWare will make my everyday life much more easy.
I know this. But with dynamic compilation you can get close to 100% speed. Think about it.
If I have seen a single piece of software where a patent should be supported, this is it.
I disagree. I'm 100% sure that if I spend one week full-time figuring out how to do VM with x86, I'll find a way. And this way will probably be the same as VMWare, especially because the constraints are fixed (Pentium+ limitations). It is just like finding a "mate in 4" on a chess position where there is only one or a limited number of possibilities.
And also note that the Virtual Machine concept is very old ; what is not immediatly obvious are the tricks to get 100% speed on Intel processors, no more. One shouldn't get patents for tricks on broken hardware design.
Hello all,
I am really looking forward to Freemware for BeOS....a great emmerging platform that VMWare has no plans to support. Obviously, vmware doesn't see the potential in enabling users to run Windows programs. People who just want their computers to work. Those people use BeOS and never think about their OS again. If Windows programs could run on it....well there's no limit...
Linux is ultimately a server OS, so running Windows server applications is not very important, since great Linux alternatives exist.
VMWare should be porting to client-oriented OSes in a big way....and persuing licencing....
Do, if VMWare won't fill the gap.....freemware will!
Eron
I run NT4 in vmware on my PII266/128M RAM. It runs about as fast as NT running natively on the machine.
Windows95 is substantially slower, and Windows98 is a complete dog, even with the same vmware client config (64M, virtual drives put on the same real partition).
I don't use any DirectX or anything. I guess that NT's I-wish-I-had-a-microkernel architecture helps. It probably doesn't help that I haven't compiled in rtc support (win98 complains, nt does not).
You have to start the X Server in 8 bpp mode, but it runs flawlessly - including sound and networking, and the speed is very good (P2-400/192MB).
:-)
What better excuse to buy VMWare do you need?
How is the VMware speed now in relation to the betas? I assumed they've stripped all the debugging code out of it they said they would?
And to the poster of the expensive bit, $99 really isn't all that much, but think of the KILLING they'd make if they lowered it to $49.95, and had a LEET-o online ordering system? they'd make much more of a killing, me thinks. At $99, I may buy it (or get work (an edu institution) to buy it, at $49 i'd definitely buy it, but VMware's gotta make their money somehow. Thanks for your contributions VMware folks!
VMware's web page indicates that their virtual platform technology is patent pending. I wonder if the freemware people are aware of this?
What the people in VMWare have got that I didn't ? PhDs? I'm a PhD student.
Remember, exactly because of the nature of the task, trying to virtualize tne x86, is again very much like trying to find a mate in 4 moves in a chess position ; and not like trying to write a beautiful poem or not exactly like inventing transistors.
You just have to sit, take a pen, a paper and the PentiumII specs (available at www.intel.com), and analyse how each concept and instruction can be virtualized ; how each mechanism can be used for virtualisation ; and how, for instance, the kernel behave in level 0 mode. This is a logic exercise.
- Phase 1: consider only the Linux kernel (this is necessary to gain the insight necessary to someone that hasn't considered virtualization before). Starting directly from "Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual, volume 3: system programming guide" is an alternative.
- Phase 1.1: analyze what exactly wouldn't work. Assume first the that virtualized linux kernel is run in a block of memory of some Linux process.
- It is immediatly obvious that the instructions that are the most problematic at first sight, are those manipulating the memory management (GDT,LDT,...). Those can be trapped be the kernel redirected to a monitor, and emulated in software. Thus the rule 1: any instruction that can be trapped by the kernel can be virtualized (albeit maybe at a performance cost). For MM, the x86 wouldn't allow processes to change memory mapping because it would be a huge security hole. Thus the instruction themselves should be virtualisable.
- Now the problem for memory: is it possible to have a memory mapping in the Linux process such as a) the kernel code can run without may traps b) at least the process of the virtual Linux kernel would run without too much traps ? Answer: probably: when you trap the MM instructions you can put whatever you want in the LDTs of your virtual-linux process (including aliasing pseudo-physical pages), at each context switch (from virtual-kernel to virtual-kernel-process and back).
- Interrupts, and access to pseudo hardware. Software-generated goes to the actual kernel of the running process, so you might be able virtualize them. In/out instruction are trapped too. More problematic is access to memory mapped devices. But then if it is memory mapped, you can traps read/write where.
- Now maybe is it time to look in the Intel for a) non-virtualisable instructions b) implementation "details" that fail miserably c) exhaustively analyze Linux kernel source code to see what it exactly does (only part of the kernel is tricky).
- A first list of the problematic instructions is in Intel Manual 3 section 2.6 "System instruction summary" (with indication about whether they are "protected from application")
Note that like in chess it is possible that a small fact will ruin your all edifice. This is expected. But then you start from the killer problem and analyze how to solve it ; the insight you have gained will be very useful.Maybe I would take more than one week full-time to figure out ; because experimenting to see how real code behave could take time. But then it is almost impossible that given enough time the/some solutions can't be found. The only problem would be if they were using undocumented features of processors (but they shouldn't, VMWare works on K6 as well as Pentiums+).
Maybe people already know how to do this in theory for x86, so you're maybe asking "what the guys at Vmware have that others haven't ?" : well, they have been doing virtual machines for years, they have done research about this (SimOS), it is logical that they were the ones that started VMWare (or were hired there). Now if you show me an identical effort with enough financial support that would have failed, you would have a point.
Note that on Microsoft OSes, it is sometimes Microsoft itself that go and copies (see Netscape, Real Networks).
Im not against paying for linux software at all. I still buy all my copies of linux instead of dloading them so i can help out the various organizations. What really pisses me off though is that someone is going to release a warezed copy of this product, which happens to e a damn fine piece of software.
Well the reality is more complex than that. Kevin Lawton has been trying to make an x86 emulator for longer than the Vmware start-up existed (and I actually booted Linux kernel one year ago with Bochs), so this is on the plus side for him. On the other hand he is attempting to basically kill Vmware business (by providing a free clone), while trying to keep his own business alive (x86 emulation with dynamic compilation), which is a lot less cool. Maybe you should consider that this is like "Netscape releasing source code of Mozilla to compete Microsoft", or "Microsoft releasing IE for free to compete with Netscape", depending on your point of view.
Freemware has certainly not an ideal as pure as the FSF or Linus, but it's not exactly a "reverse-engineer, and rip-off" effort.
Coincidentally, today my girlfriend purchased a GMAT study CD that only runs under Windoze. So I decided to try out VMWare. Needless to say I am very impressed. The GMAT study CD runs great (save for sound) as does every other windows app that is not DirectX. Performance is quite zippy for everything except processor/memory intentsive operations. For instance, MSVC came up fine and was very responsive for editing, working, etc. However compiles took a very long time (30 seconds native Windows 98 vs. 4 minutes under vm ware). :) You can reboot Windows under Linux.
BTW I am using an AMD K6-333 with 128 mb of ram running under RH 5.2 with KDE.
Installation was a snap!
I really like this product. Hopefully they will support direct x and game ports in a future release to satisfy the gamer in me, but for an introductory cost of $75 this product is a steal. I would never pay money for a Virtual95 like product because Bill G gets my $$, but with VMWare that does not happen.
Overall, I recommend VMWare for everyone except hardcore gamers and developers. Anyone else (like Quicken, or Office users) should take notice and purchase this product. Just imagine, never reboot your machine under Windows again
I hope VMWare gets direct x working sometime in the future and there is not too big a speed hit. However this company has done an incredible job already and should be commended for cutting down many office's barrier to entry: no MS office on Linux.
this thing is so damn cool, and we need to dispell the "Linux users never buy things" myth.
*thinks of the myriad of uses to which it can be put*
*thinks: its 3:15am, i need sleep*
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Check out the pricing page. There is an introductory offer if you buy it in the next couple months.
There's more to VMWare than running MS products. I've often wondered what other distributions were like, or maybe try FreeBSD someday. With VMWare I can (and have in some instances).
I'll probably buy it when it supports OS/2. I have almost no use for 'Doze, but I have VisualAge Java and Entrepreneur on my OS/2 partition. I sure wouldn't mind accessing them from Linux.
Of course, even better would be IBM waking up and porting VAJ to Linux....
I noticed that too, but that wasn't the only problem. For around 5 hours, the network was down, but for about an hour after it was back up, the slashdot machine was refusing all port 80 connections.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters:
Don't steal any IDEAS!? The word steal tries to bias the thing, but even so the comment is strange.
Not that I agree with the possibility of software patents anyway, but let's just assume we are talking about ideas that are not subject to patents (prior art, insufficient originality, etc.). Taking ideas from products in the same area is one of the major inspirations for making any product better. It is not about "stealing code", but just about doing what winds up working well.
Just a trivial example. I think that the idea of creating a real-time markup spell-check flags in a word-processor is a pretty good idea. It can be implemented better or worse, of course; but it is sometimes useful to see an unobtrusive mark (like a special color underline) by words that are possible misspellings. Sad to say, the first product that I know of that did this was MS-Word (There may well be a prior example that I am not familiar with). It is hardly WRONG for WordPerfect (which I actually use, and is better than MS-Word in many ways, including its implementation of this feature) to implement this same useful feature. Corel may well even have gotten the idea from MS's implementation of it.
Further, it would not be wrong for me to add this feature to an Open Source editor that I wanted to contribute to. If the idea is a good one, more power to whomever wants to implement it. That leads to software innovation, and generally improving products.
The Permida2 video cards (3Dlabs) suck under VMware. The X server provided by VMware, that supposedly has the better DGA stuff in it, does not work. (well, it runs, but the DGA extensions don't work - so its no different than using a stock Xfree86 Xserver.) This is a fairly common card in workstations, so this is a big sticking point.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
But the performance of Cafe under VMware is horrid, and I can't figure out why. Every other program runs very fast in NT inside VMware, even graphical ones like CorelDraw. Word is fast, Excell is fast, Netscape is fast, IE is fast. But Visual Cafe is dog slow and I can't figure out why it is any different. (It isn't signifigantly slower than those other programs under native NT.)
I've tried everything. I've tried giving most of my 256 MB ram to vmware. I've tried running VMware before any other application, to ensure it has a greater likelyhood of grabbing real RAM and not swap space. I've tried running bare with nothing but VMware running. I'm using the accellerated DGA-ified X server from VMware. This is really bugging me because Visual Cafe is the only app I really need under NT - the other apps that can run fine are ones I don't use.
Has anyone out there had a similar experience and can give me a magic bullet to fix this?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Bochs is a completely different animal than VMWare. As far as I know, VMWare is the only product of its' kind since IBM's VM. I looked into doing something like this awhile ago, and it certainly does not look easy.
I am just curious to know how they supported non-priveleged instructions like manipulating/reading the flags register, which is needed for virtualization.
Again, VMWare is NOT an x86 emulator. A Virtual Machine program is many orders of magnitude harder to create than a mere emulator. If I have seen a single piece of software where a patent should be supported, this is it.
Rubbish. Check out this link which is almost three years old, where Alan says it can be done. This isn't some obscure mailing list, this is the Linux kernel development mailing list, read by thousands (I read it first time around).
Really it's just an extension of what FX!32 does, with x86 as the host, and better support for OS-level stuff. A hell of a lot of work, but no surprise that it's possible.
Personally, I see your promotion of the Freemware (which makes no sense.. FreeMachineWare?) project as a way to push your pseudo-commercial Bochs emulator... GPL Bochs so we have some code to go with, and I'll help where I can (however, I am not a coder).
Burried deep inside their maze of support links, there's info on using I believe a Mitsumti IDE CD-ROM driver to be able to use your CD drive in DOS. Windows 9x, Linux and any other OS with even medicore device support will already have capable generic drivers though.
I wouldn't call testing, writing documentation, generating ideas, and offering resources to be "very little else".
While I may not be a coder, I am not completely useless in the open source community. There is a great need for people to write documentation, to answer questions, to generate ideas, and yes, to talk a lot. If nobody took the time to write the documentation for the LDP, for example, do you think there would be nearly as many people using Linux today?
Sure, the non-coders may seem to not do much, but many of us try our best, despite people such as yourself who think we are useless and expendable.
I now find myself wondering why I'm trying to explain myself to an Anonymous Coward, who's main contribution to the community has been pure noise, not unlike so many others on slashdot.
Life is too short to make things that I can afford to buy.
I think you're right. I thought so the first time "freemware" was announced.
I doubt it'll get anywhere. I mean look at Bochs... an interesting concept, but one thousands of CS students have done. Lots of people have written emulators for a lot of different platforms. Hacking away in their dorm room, there's probably a lot who threw in ways to dynamically convert the code to native code.
Bochs isn't technically anything more impressive than the Mac emulators, Amiga emulators, and so on all the way back to PDP-11 emulators and (my favorite) Atari 8-bit emulators. And its a whole lot less useful.
I think you're exactly right about the motivations of the project precisely because of how completely different the two projects actually are.
I think the other posts saying this project is damaging to VMware are correct in its intent, but not in its reality. This is vaporware, nothing more. Patents aside, whats the odds that this'll turn into a useful program that can actually compete with VMware? Slim. Probably wouldn't be too far off saying none.
And at a (completely reasonable) $99 cost, why bother?
Freemware will serve as an education tool. With the source code available people can learn more about virtualisation. It's not a matter of someone wanting to go out and drive every commercial project out of business people enjoy writing code and VMware is good and writing it will be an interesting experience for those involved and would look great on a CV ;)
Also it will have these advantages:
1) If someone wants to port it to an unsupported OS (e.g. FreeBSD) they can as they have the code. With VMware you need to use Linux or NT (well NT is going to be supported) as the host OS. No code means you can't change that.
2) As with all open source projects bugs tend to get fixed faster.
3) It is competition for VMware. VMware will have to continue to deliver a cutting edge quality product as Freemware improves. If no competition then VMware may never improve (it's good now but not perfect).
I support VMware and Freemware. I believe it's the right of any company to charge for their product. I'll probably buy it. I'm not against proprietry software and I encourage it on the Linux paltform. However having an open source solution will help a lot of people.
--
http://www.vmware.com/products/linuxpricing.html
For those who want to buy the product before 14 July 1999 they've got a special price of $75.00 instead of $99 for non-commercial use. Download the evaluation license, try it out for 30 days and if you're happy order the product and if it's a huge success at this discounted price then they masy make that the permanent price.
--
Well, as long as you don't get any ideas from the VMWare product, fine.
But if you do steal ideas and/or code from VMWare, I'll personally do whatever I can to see that they sue you into oblivion.
This seems like a deliberate effort to undermine the work that VMWare has done - and probably expects to be paid for - and unfortunately will have the effect of causing other companies not to bother supporting Linux.
As a programmer, I have several ideas that I think may turn into commercial products, and planned on supporting Linux. But this, and other efforts to clone commercial products (that are charging very reasonable prices) have definately changed my mind.
If this is how the Linux community treats companies that invest enormous amounts of time and effort building great products that support Linux, then to Hell with Linux, I'll stick with developing for WinBlows...
Dream
Dream
Actually, I really doubt any (or little) of the code from Mac-on-Linux would be useful, since the systems are so drastically different, (at least from what you need to provide a OS to work). Yes some the kernel patches *might* be useful (if the makefiles were changed to change the i386 spefic parts of linus's kernel. Mac-on-Linux is quite different from vmware, since it is a kernel patch, not just remapping code.
I think the debate on vmware vs. freeware is basically the same as SheepShaver vs. Mac-on-Linux, one promises advanced features, sooner, while the other provides a powerful open-base of code that any one could use, and might even find it's way on to your favorite distro cds.
I think Freemware is a great consept, since it will be publicly shareable, unlike vmware, but vmware will remain one step ahead (just like wabi vs. wine, in the past).
That's My 52626262626161613616 of the issue,
AArthur
aarthur@h3o.net
While that does sorta make sense, it brings the really old question to mind: Why develop Linux at all?
Windows 98 is only $89 and comes without us people wasting time coding something that might only be used by 10% of the people and would be behind Windows in some ways.
Get Real. GNU software works pretty well, and is nipping on the heals of commerical software all the time, like KDE/GNOME vs. Windows desktop, like Apache vs. IIS, like bash vs. DOS.
The fact is that GNU software often out-preforms the best of commerical software, and yes commerical software needs serious competion from GNU, so we all can improve, and get better then GNU and commerical software.
It comes down to this: Freemware will spark vmware development, vmware people will need to work hard to keep up with free software's progress.
Thanks,
AArthur
This looks like neat stuff, I might pick up a copy on an Edu. discount - but for those of you who've used it: what's the cost to performance?
I imagine that wedging an abstraction layer between the OS and the hardware slows things down a bit.
-q
It's $75 until July 14 (see their price list ). I'm buying it!
Er, steal the idea? The VMWare idea isn't even remotely new.
The first Microsoft product was BASIC for the Altair. Bill Gates & Paul Allen didn't have an Altair -- they implemented the product on a virtual machine on a PDP-(something).
Intel built support for virtual 8086's able to run 8086 operating systems directly into its 80386. Software support for such machines is already included in OS/2 2.0+, Windows 3.0+, and all Unicies that run DOSemu.
Java uses a protected, virtual Java machine, which also is available in hardware implementation.
VMWare is simply a software implementation of a virtual 386 machine. While complex to execute, it isn't exactly a new idea -- there have been lots of 386 system emulators out there.
386-on-x86 is somewhat rarer -- but there have been attempts dating back almost to the day that the 386 was released.
In short, saying that people shouldn't try to make a open source vmware clone is like saying that people shouldn't work on KDE and Gnome because CDE is already available for Linux.
Wahoo! Time to go buy another 256MB DIMM! VM's galore :) ! Ah well... at least RAM is cheap.
As you point out, they are probably patenting some clever technique for virtualizing the apparently unvirtualizable, and this is most likely going to be patentable IMO.
I'd hope that they would not sue any truly open-source patent infringer, who is not making money off the back of the open source code.
Sounds like a nice project. I hope you guys think about coordinating with the Mac-on-Linux people, who are creating the equivalent thing for running MacOS on Linux/PPC. (They already have something running, too.) I realize that quite a lot of this stuff is processor-specific, but I would hope that there is a fair amount that generalizes, too.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I don't think there is any justification for creating a monopoly here, thank you very much.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
As far as I know, VMWare is the only product of its' kind since IBM's VM.
`since IBM's VM'? Considering that, as they say on the web-site, the idea really isn't new, it's really irksome that they've applied for a (ehm) software patent for it.
-rozzin.
If I have seen a single piece of software where a patent should be supported, this is it.
Perhaps you mean `copyright'--copyrights are intended to `protect' original writings/software-implementations (OK, truthfully, the latter use of copyright is what it's evolved into), which this is. Patents are meant to `protect' original ideas, which VMware is definitely not.
-rozzin.
`Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?'
-rozzin.
...what is going to drive comapnies to release software for linux if someone just goes out and copies what they are doing?
Who cares?
If you want to play with proprietary software, and you don't mind paying the money, buy a proprietary Unix--the majority of any open-source Linux-based software will run on just about any other Unix/Unix-like0 system (there's even a movement to make the other Unixes use Linux binaries), and possibly with more stability1. What's your reason for using Linux-based GNU, anyway?
Footnotes:
0. Try U/WIN, too, along with one of the MS-Windows-based X servers.
1. While I've experienced less than 3 Linuxy system-crashes in the past year+, Linus says that Linux isn't as stable as some of the proprietary Unixes.
-rozzin.
If the programmers of VMWare makes a sufficiently better product, people will pay for the software. This is the way capitalism works. If the Open Source (TM) community creates a better product for a better price without stealing any code, there's nothing wrong with that. Besides, as more code get contributed, other programmers can learn and create an even better product. If you want to go to Winblows, fine. You make a lucrative enough product, and M$ will develop a crappy version of it, and integrate it into Windows, then make agreements with other hard/software companies for proprietary standards and exclusive support of the M$ product. Then all development either stops or slows and you are stuck with a crash prone, bloat infested, piece of software.
Just my 2% of a dollar.
Erik
I'm far from against people creating software for free but what is going to drive comapnies to release software for linux if someone just goes out and copies what they are doing?
I don't think I'm going to buy vmware, and it's not because of the 99 bucks. I have no problems with paying $99 for the product, but it better come with the source code. I'm not going to pay money, just to end up in a situation where something breaks tomorrow, and I'm screwed.
That isn't impressed by VMWare? It's nothing personal, their technology just doesnt make me want to run out and pay 99 or even 75 dollars to run two operating systems at once. It's just a virtual machine created in the server OS which the client is run inside. Java does the same thing under your native OS. Not much is new about that. If I want to run Windows I think I can go through the hassle of rebooting. While some seem to really mind rebooting, I don't. And if I cant play games, use video and sound stuff...why use Windows?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Also, FreeMWare is not just being written because people like the idea of VMWare but don't want to pay cash for it.
You know, that might be true.
But you have to admit, it sure doesn't look that way.
What I see when I look around is whenever someone comes out with a commercial or semi-commercial product for Linux that looks good, other people immediately rush out with projects to copy it in open source. QT/Harmony, VMware/Freemware...I mean, come on, why name it "Freemware"--obviously meant to rhyme with and suggest "VMware"? It's almost like they're thumbing their collective noses at the VMware creators.
The Freemware folks may have the best of intentions and the purest of motives...but they'll have a damn hard time convincing people of that, because what they're doing looks bad. And it makes it that much harder to convince people to make commercial products for Linux, or to open their commercial source up, for that matter.
It adds to the perception of Linux-users as people who would rather have free beer than free speech.
If we really want Linux to "take over the world," it's starting to seem like we might be our own worst enemies.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Yah I mean it! what kind of price do you whiners really want?? (I'm puzzled)
send + more == money?
According to the XFree86 FAQ:
Although it is technically possible to use multiple PCI-based SVGA cards in the same machine, none of the servers currently support this. The VGA16 and Mono servers are both capable of running both a VGA compatible card and a non-VGA compatible monochrome card in the same machine. For XFree86-4.0 we are working on true multi head support.
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
I was in the process of downloading the latest beta to check it out when the files got yanked and 1.0 put up. Weird. Checked out 1.0 on the 30 day license. Might as well have been a 30 minute license. I was sold. VMware is all that and a bag of chips (SIMMs, DIMMs, etc ;-) Best $75 I've parted with in ages. I'll be up all night repartitioning, installing, etc. Wheeee! Where else can one simultaneously run apache, MySql, php, Ghostscript, GNOME, etc. side by side with Quicken 99, Taxcut, Outlook, and MS Greetings Workshop. Unlike many folks who tend to be OS elitists, I am an OS whore. Bring em on. Can't wait to play with DOS 3.3 again. I wonder if I'll be able to install Fusion (a MacOS emu) in a VMWare DOS box. How fun! Now if X only supported multple monitors. I suppose that's worth giving up until XFree86 4.0
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
Attention, Windows newbie !
In the three years that I am running exclusively
Linux I already forgot, how difficult it is to
install and administer DOS and Windows. Where is
DOS CD-ROM HOWTO?
Anybody remembers, what one must put into the
\CONFIG.SYS to enable ATAPI CD-ROM? In the
\AUTOEXEC.BAT must be mscdex, I know. But that still does not make my CDROM (recognized by
VMware on boot) work.
The problem is, that after the 3 years I no
longer have install floppies for DOS or Windows 3.11.
Petrus
The idea of virtualization is far from new.
IMHO your comment would be valid if it was a new innovative idea - then the company would need as much support as it could get from the Linux community.
Also, FreeMWare is not just being written because people like the idea of VMWare but don't want to pay cash for it. FreeMWare being an open source product gives greater flexibility: it has the potential to be very useful for developing and/or debugging operating systems as developers can tinker with the source code to make it fit their needs.
I'll conceed the points listed in the replies. I knew that Bochs had been around for a while and I agree that its not a new idea. I hadnt thought of it in that light. It just struck me that when vmware was made available, a new project called freemware was announced. I would agree with the comments about the learning benifit of it as well. I think it will be a great project if people contribute to it like other opensource projects have been.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I'm far from against people creating software for free but what is going to drive comapnies to release software for linux if someone just goes out and copies what they are doing? Im not against paying for linux software at all. I still buy all my copies of linux instead of dloading them so i can help out the various organizations. What really pisses me off though is that someone is going to release a warezed copy of this product, which happens to e a damn fine piece of software.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Does anybody know how compatible this thing will run 95? When the beta came out, IIRC it didn't do DirectX/accelerated video stuff, so video games didn't work, and we all know that video games are the only thing worth keeping 95 around for :)
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
...anyone know where I can find out what specifically has changed between 1.0 and the last beta?
(I'm still hoping they'll inadvertently fix whatever prevents OS/2 from booting...)
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
Don't you mean "As long as you don't get any ideas from the source code."?
The right to reverse engineer is fairly well accepted in this country.
How is it a crime to "steal an idea"? One that isn't patented, I mean.
Linux CDs, Hardware, ... :-)
Surely, If you use virtual disks, performance drops and CPU load ist nearly 100% (300Mhz).
NT Bootlader seems to wait the double time than adjusted.
Of course, application speed depends highly on the amout of RAM, the virtual PC has.
Don't worry, your ideas will certainly be stolen regardless of what platform you develop for. Did you not know that MS is famous for this? Or do you think that GUIs began with Windows?
If VMWare has a good product, it will make them well off, regardless of free competiton. Freemware and other ambitious open source projects spend a great deal of time organizing, and they are unlikely to support the product as well as VMWare. (Of course, time will make certain.) Especially if it's true that Freemware is designed to destroy VMWare for someone's personal benefit.
Of course, don't support linux if you don't want. It's there only if it's something you enjoy. If you don't, your aura will probably be bad for it anyway.
You have a good approach to solving problems.
This is pretty much the path I took when I
was thinking about how to virtualize a PC.
I sat down one night, and was thinking hey,
I've been writing an x86 PC emulator for a few
years now, I should be able to do this. It
took me about 2 hours to figure out a
fundamental scheme that should work. The
rest is just hashing out the nuances and
details.
After you figure out how to protect against
an arbitrary instruction being executed, then
you're on your way. This is the most important
thing that the x86 chip doesn't do for you.
Once you can protect against a set of instructions
being run, you have chance to emulate them in
the context of virtualization. And emulation
of the CPU and IO devices has been done in
bochs (http://www.bochs.com) for quite some
time now.
There's ongoing discussion on
news://news.redhat.com/redhat.projects.freemware
You can also search comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine
(using dejanews) for a discussion I had on how
to do this awhile ago. I'll be rehashing some of
this stuff and posting it to the newsgroup above, probably after I get back from Linux Expo.
-Kevin Lawton
http://www.bochs.com
http://www.freemware.org
If you're interested in helping out with an
open source vmware clone project, check
out the freemware project at:
http://www.freemware.org
news://news.redhat.com/redhat.projects.freemware
Discussion on implementation is under way.
Thanks,
Kevin Lawton
http://www.bochs.com
Does international chars like swedish åäö work with vmware 1.0 ?