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FreeMWare: Like VMWare but Open Source
CentrX writes "I was surprised that no one has contributed a story about FreeMWare since they started. FreeMWare is "an extensible open source PC virtualization software program which will allow PC and workstation users to run multiple operating systems concurently on the same machine." Like VMWare, only free and open-source. They now have a CVS repository and the latest source can be downloaded. I think this project is needed and needs some support from the community. You can also join the mailing list." FreeMWare was mentioned briefly here in April. Looks like it's come a long way since then.
A little history, to be fair. The idea of a "virtual machine" and the name VM came from IBM a looong time ago, 70s I believe, at least well before 1980.
IBM sold VM that could load and run other of its operating systems on 370-based mainframes, like MVS or even other copies and versions of VM. This was very helpful for system administrators. Back then, you just couldn't go buy a test box for trying out newer versions or for testing risky patches, etc. So you just ran another guest OS under VM!
So, if anyone has a beef about using the VM acronym in a product name describing this feature, it should be IBM.
I've been on the mailing list for freeMWare since it started, and although I'm quiet, I pay attention. It really is coming along, and is (unlike other group projects I've followed) actually being led somewhere by the remarkable mr Kevin Lawton (sp?). I have to say, congrats to all the contributors, as this is a big step in the right direction.
-Josh G
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I for one am glad this is in development. I used VMWare back in it's beta days and was quite impressed with the idea. I wasn't that impressed when I started getting spammed about the release version and 'send us x ammount of dollars so you can still use this.'
If I was going to pay them the ammount they wanted, I would expect that all of my hardware would work with VMWare, but it wouldn't recognize my windoze partition and made me re-install, wouldn't let me have the 6 IDE devices I have in my pc (4 HDD, 1 CD-ROM, 1 CD-RW)
Now with FreeMWare, it's free, I expect stuff like this, and spending hours configuring it to be useful. I wonder how this will affect VMWare's pricing scheme?
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Recreated commercial products is an excellent idea if there's currently no free alternative. The point is to maximize choice. People should have the option to pay for a commercial solution if they want to, they should not be forced into buying one because they have no alternative. And from the other side, a company throwing serious development money at a team of programmers that can't produce a superior product should go bankrupt! Software is not supposed to be welfare! We shouldn't be paying people to do useless jobs. Commercial developers should make money if and only if they produce products that provide server above and beyond what can be produced by a bunch of hackers in their spare time for free! If they can't, then why are we paying money to them? Is this just corporate welfare?
Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff.
Only if they are producing something superior.
And it doesn't just line someones pockets - its lets them work on their products as a job instead of some "after school" effort.
If they aren't producing something better than 'some "after school" effort' would produce, they ought not be making money at it! If they are producing something better, they will make money at it, since people who want the better product will pay for it instead of use the inferior free alternative.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
VMWare and FreeMWare both virtualize PC hardware. Code executes natively on the host CPU. Playstations, and your intelligent toaster probably do not use the same CPU as your host machine. And non x86 host machines will be unable to run the x86 versions of NT, Linux, or BeOS.
CPU emulation exists and can do all of the above, however, you don't get something for nothing. CPU emulation (see BOCHS, executor, etc) is incredibly slow in the naive case, and even with complex techniques such as dynamic recompilation, signifigantly slower than native code.
I don't mean to be critical, I really don't, and before anyone flaims me, I'm guilty of it too. But here is what I'm hearing:
"I'd really like to use VMware, but they want money."
"VMware is great, but they keep nagging me to pay them."
Etc., etc.. I understand that VMware's not open source, and that maybe it should be. Maybe after this it will be, once they realize that they're not the only kids on the block anymore. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay for it. If it's a program that you use, and that you enjoy, you SHOULD pay for it.
When developers start realizing that they're catering to a bunch of cheap bastards (myself included), they're going to pick up shop, or begin attaching themselves to something a little more worthwhile. Yes, someone else will pick up where they left off, but we need long-timers. Those in for the long haul, who've been around and gotten the experience.
I for one tend to at least try to support the projects that I reap benefit from. Granted, I don't use VMware, and would probably switch to FreeMWare if I did, but not because it was free. More because I am free, free to decide what I think it's worth to me in the scheme of things, free to choose when or where I'm going to pay for it. In other words, I don't use free software. If I like something, I like to show my appreciation of the effort, and money usually works quite nicely.
This is not to say that the developers wouldn't be just as happy with a postcard. A lot of times, it's things like that that MAKE the project worthwhile. In short, I strongly urge those of us caught up in Open Source to appreciate the authors. If you're going to switch to FreeMWare, try and make a donation. Can't make a donation? Send a postcard, or an email, or a birthday cake, or something. Let them know that their work is appreciated, or it won't go on much longer.
Anyone know what minimum specs for this are? I don't use VMWare because my processer (p233) wouldn't run concurrent os's well... I know I *should* run a beefy machine to do something like this, but for situations like mine, where it's plenty of machine for my use, but not the newest wiz-bang 750 mhz chips, will this work well or at all? Lots of non-cutting edge systems out there, ya know. :)
David.
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Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff. And it doesn't just line someones pockets - its lets them work on their products as a job instead of some "after school" effort.
When the next killer app comes out for Linux I'll pay my fair share. How about you?
So what I want to know is if anyone can tell me if FreeMWare will be able to just boot from my existing Windows partition, or if that is even possible?
Well, let me just point out that there are companies producing commercial X-servers and doing quite well at it, even thought XFree86 exists. AND not only does XFree86 exist but it comes with every distribution. If these X-server companies can compete with the out-of-box solution than VMWare can compete with FreeMWare. I mean Wine hasn't replaced Windows yet has it? The folks at VMWare just have to raise the bar alittle. Since they are making money they just need to sink a little of it back into the software. If they can't raise the bar and compete with the free stuff then they never deserved to be in business in the first place.
Without knowing the circumstances and amount of truth behind that statement I can't really comment further. What I can say is, I have used bochs before (for an OS design assignment) and while slow and difficult to configure, it is quite versatile and usable - Windows 3.1 runs usably under Alpha, for example. But I wonder how much of bochs is directly applicable to the problem of virtualisation?
Daniel.
While I don't have any idea whether it's technically a trademark violation, I wish the developers had chosen a name that wasn't simply a variation on VMWare. "FreeMWare" is currently a misleading name in that it suggests that it can do everything that VMWare can do -- which I understand is not presently the case. And even if it could, the name itself suggests an unnecessary hostility to the existence of a commercial product. Names are free; there's no reason not to pick something original.
This sort of development is a line of demarcation between those who like Linux because, like the BSDs and Hurd, it's Free and Open, and those who just like Linux as the "alternative operating system of the day," like OS/2 and BeOS and AmigaOS were/are.
I'm a member of the former; I'm glad that there's a Free VMWare-like solution. I'm not so religious that I would never buy commercial software - I do and will - but I will always prefer a Free option, even if paying for media and documentation (money isn't a big issue for me.)
This DOES put Linux ISVs in an awkward position, but I'm afraid that's really their problem - I hope to see the day that the idea of paying for software is as archaic as the idea of paying for buggy whips. I'm not doing this to make ISVs rich.
I have a concern, in fact, about the growing success of Linux. If two people are doing something for Free because they enjoy doing it, they will usually work pretty hard and do a good job of it. If both of them are getting paid well for it, nothing changes except - perhaps - things might happen more quickly. BUT if ONE is getting paid and the other isn't, I suspect that the latter *might* say "screw this, I'm getting out of here." I'm nervous about what the move to funded development by groups like Mozilla, VALinux, and RedHat might do to the people who were developing on their own dime - and when the IPOs pay off and we get our first cash-in-hand Free Software multimillionaires, how will that affect the people who *aren't?*
I've used VMWare, and it does an excellent job of emulating an x86 environment, with better compatibility than Wine, DOSEmu, or just about anything else. That's impressive.
:).
:)
However, for whatever reason, it needs a lot more RAM. It has to physically allocate however much RAM you tell it to use for the emulated OS, in my case 32MB for Win '98, and then it uses at least another 8MB for its devices and itself, and somewhere in there my 64MB K6/300 decides that it hates life and gets really slow... That's why they recommend at least 128MB RAM. DOSEmu, by contrast, never uses as much RAM as I tell it it can use unless it absolutely has to. Usually I give it 8MB, but when I wanted to run Callus, I gave it 20MB. Worked great, except for lacking sound. Wine generally uses 4MB above and beyond the memory usage of the Windows app, in my experience. (these numbers are all pretty rough, if you've tested this more, please post some results)
Also, I didn't like it that VMWare didn't support more options for an x86 drive. I have a lot of ext2 partitions that I use for my DOS stuff, and DOSEmu and Wine deal with that just fine. I guess I could make some native FAT partitions, but those things are nasty. And compressed drives really are a hack, but I might do that again instead. So I've got a big file where VMWare keeps its 'OS'.
And, when all is said and done, what good is it? Well, I've found that I don't really have much of a use for Win '98, and I can run a lot of other stuff with DOSEmu or Wine. Just about the only thing I'd want VMWare for would be displaying videos with proprietary, unsupported codecs, since XAnim is missing a lot of them and the companies are pretty lame about it.
So why would I want FreeMWare? Well, to play around with it. To be able to compile it with my compiler optimizations and see how it runs. (even if the VMWare team does something like this... well, I don't know about it, and I can't test it)
To see if someone hacks in ext2 support or some kind of generic drive emulation that works well. (have the IDE/SCSI faking area, or use Linux's SCSI faking, and then have the actual drive, whether it's a disk file, a FAT partition, a DOSEmu drive, a VMWare drive, or an ext2 partition...)
I'd like to see it without the weird video corruption I get with VMWare (although my video card does suck
And then I'll have to test out how the native sound works in DOS, that's a must for my DOS games. And then benchmark against DOSEmu.
Of course, first I'd like to know how it's doing now. Has anyone built the source from CVS? I normally just download the releases, but the warning on this one indicated it was anything but stable.
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