Windows begins supporting Linux

[Kaido]

http://www.redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=7317

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2153340/shock-microsoft-supports-linux

:Q

 

[spyordie007]

Virtual server for free, slick.

 

[Madwand1]

VMWare already does this, but the pricing is still cool in that consumers got the same deal from VMWare as a result of Microsoft's competitive play. MS loses little here -- people would do it regardless via VMWare; what's the point of a virtual OS if it doesn't support something major like Linux; having the underlying OS be MS gives MS revenue; Windows 2000 series and XP home are not supported. I don't quite get the shock & surprise, unless it means actually hand-holding customers through Linux installations on MS.

Granted, virtualization is nice when Linux doesn't get the underlying hardware support right. I'm going through this ATM with a NVidia 430 chipset -- it's working fine under VMWare, but not so fine natively on my hardware and the fix sequence I see so far has an amazing stack depth.

 

[TonyRic]

VMware Virtual Server (AKA GSX) is now free as well.

 

[Nothinman]

Windows begins supporting Linux

It's MS supporting Linux, not Windows, but that's beside the point. MS knows they have to do this otherwise VS will never gain any real traction against VMWare and Xen. Once the virtualization suppiort in hardware becomes popular Xen will really take off since you'll be able to run any OS inside of it without modifying the guest OS to support Xen. If MS ends up being the only virtualization vendor that only supports Windows, they'll get laughed at.

I don't quite get the shock & surprise, unless it means actually hand-holding customers through Linux installations on MS.

It possibly does, if they support Linux inside of VPC/VS they have to support the virtual hardware and the device drivers for that hardware.

I'm going through this ATM with a NVidia 430 chipset -- it's working fine under VMWare, but not so fine natively on my hardware and the fix sequence I see so far has an amazing stack depth.

Complain to nVidia then. It works in VMWare because the guest OS never sees the real hardware, if it didn't work in VMWare on that hardware you would have much bigger issues.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Complain to nVidia then. It works in VMWare because the guest OS never sees the real hardware, if it didn't work in VMWare on that hardware you would have much bigger issues.

Sure, blaming a major HW vendor for screwing up support in your OS and not working with them on this together and requiring your users to go through numerous hoops is a winning strategy, right? I'm not here to lay blame on the issue; I'm merely pointing out that it is a very big day to day problem which is actually covered up with virtualization.

 

[Nothinman]

Sure, blaming a major HW vendor for screwing up support in your OS and not working with them on this together and requiring your users to go through numerous hoops is a winning strategy, right?

Yes, it is. What motivation does nVidia have to release specs for their hardware is no one complains?

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Sure, blaming a major HW vendor for screwing up support in your OS and not working with them on this together and requiring your users to go through numerous hoops is a winning strategy, right?

Yes, it is. What motivation does nVidia have to release specs for their hardware is no one complains?

Ah, so this is a good strategy. Well, I'd better adopt it too. I'm complaining. I actually don't give a hoot if Linux or NVidia are to blame, you both suck at this, and the fact that virtualization is taking hold in MS platforms shows this too.

 

[Nothinman]

Ah, so this is a good strategy. Well, I'd better adopt it too. I'm complaining. I actually don't give a hoot if Linux or NVidia are to blame, you both suck at this, and the fact that virtualization is taking hold in MS platforms shows this too.

It shows nothing of the sort, virtualization isn't about working around bugs in drivers or hardware, it's about compacting multiple boxes into one piece of hardware and getting more out of that hardware.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Ah, so this is a good strategy. Well, I'd better adopt it too. I'm complaining. I actually don't give a hoot if Linux or NVidia are to blame, you both suck at this, and the fact that virtualization is taking hold in MS platforms shows this too.

It shows nothing of the sort, virtualization isn't about working around bugs in drivers or hardware, it's about compacting multiple boxes into one piece of hardware and getting more out of that hardware.

Of course, that is an important role for virtualization, but it's hardly the only role. Moreover this role is on somewhat shaky grounds itself, because if should not be necessary on a decent platform + application set to have multiple OS's running on a single box. Add in complexity of configuration, application conflicts, down time, lack of adequate load balancing and scheduling tools themselves, etc., it makes practical sense in some cases to virtualize. However, in theory at least, at best it's a patch on failures upstream somewhere.

Now why would I virtualize on MS if I could save that license cost and virtualize on Linux? To be fair: One reason is that some boxes come bundled with that MS license. But that's not the case every time, and I think that ignoring the hardware support issue is a stretch from reality. If hardware support was not a problem for Linux, virtualization of it on MS would not be as important.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Sure, blaming a major HW vendor for screwing up support in your OS and not working with them on this together and requiring your users to go through numerous hoops is a winning strategy, right?

Yes, it is. What motivation does nVidia have to release specs for their hardware is no one complains?

Ah, so this is a good strategy. Well, I'd better adopt it too. I'm complaining. I actually don't give a hoot if Linux or NVidia are to blame, you both suck at this, and the fact that virtualization is taking hold in MS platforms shows this too.

Umm... If Creative provides shifty drivers for Windows that cause bluescreens and whatnot is it Microsoft's fault? The fact that support for Nvidia server products under Linux is very very good and Linux's support for everybody else's consumer style motherboards is also very nice.. then the problem is mostly nvidia.

It's not difficult for a hardware vendor to get linux support. Mostly what you have to do is just send a couple prototype boards out to the appropriate people with some good publicly aviable documentation and that's pretty much it.

And as far as 'virtualization taking hold on MS platforms'.... Your kinda missing the point.

The idea is that the operating system becomes simply another application.. A enviroment that holds other programs. A sandbox. Changable like swapping out web server or office applications.

With Linux running on Xen. I can have multiple operating systems running different versions of software. I can play the operating systems. I can stop them, pause them. I can migrate them to other machines while they are running. I can make snapshots of them. I can undo changes like a sort of rewind. All sorts of fun stuff.

For example at home I have 2 machines that I play around with. One is my desktop, the other is my server. On my server I have Xen running Debian Stable in DomU as a AFS server. I have a kerberos server in another instance, a ldaps server in another. On a fourth I have Debian testing running a Zope server. I have 2 or 3 other installs that I am not using for anything at the moment.

On my desktop I have Debian unstable running directly on hardware. Using Vmware player I have a Ubuntu system setup for simple 'secure browsing' with a sandboxed firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5 version browsers. I have Redhat Enterprise 4 running Zimbra 'collabaration platform' (a enterprise Exchange-type thingy). I have the OpenSuse Linux 10.0 running KDE 3.5 so that I can play around with kde without having to install it on my desktop machine.

To do this with just machines It would require a minimum of 5 PCs.. one of which I would have to quadruple-boot.

At work we have a IBM mainframe... IBM basicly created the concept as well as other related things (such as virtual memory). In this respect the PC world is finally catching up to were IBM was 20 years ago. Seriously. I can run down to IBM and pick up a POWER based machine with a built-in hypervisor that is actually capable of running Windows if I was to purchase a optional Xeon cpu on a PCI card that I can plug into it. (mostly used for running Linux). And that's the crappy lowest-priced VM stuff IBM offers. Our mainframe has what is called Lpars.. basicly proccessing partitions that can slice up the machine's resources for various operating systems. Right now they are playing around with running Linux on it so that they can increase the networking capabilities of the stodgy old operating system that they are currently using.

Even when compared to other PC-only solutions like vmware and xen Microsoft is still going to be about 2 years behind it's competators when it comes to this stuff. Their support for Linux isn't due out to next year. Their Hypervisor stuff, which does what Xen and Vmware server editions do right now, isn't due out until 2008 or 2009. So Microsoft still has ways to go... but at least now they are actually doing something.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: drag
Umm... If Creative provides shifty drivers for Windows that cause bluescreens and whatnot is it Microsoft's fault?

Obviously not, but also obviously MS has put in lots of effort to work together with HW vendors so that when products go out on mainstream platforms there is widespread support and functionality. MS has not simply overlooked this issue and said that it's the problem of the HW vendors to solve some time after release. Of course it is a big part of the role of the HW vendors to provide drivers. Out of the box functioning is simply something that I've come to expect and gotten used to, and the degree of this non-functioning under Linux is much greater, and even that would be an understatement to some users considering what it can take to fix it. I'd like to see it improve, and I think progress would be much greater and adoption much simpler for users with effort on both sides in the development area.

Virtualization is a great smokescreen for covering up some of these issues, and if it was enough for me, I'd be happy.

Well, thanks for the discussion. It's been "fun". I'd better get back to fixing my [expletive virtualized] installation.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: drag
Umm... If Creative provides shifty drivers for Windows that cause bluescreens and whatnot is it Microsoft's fault?

Obviously not, but also obviously MS has put in lots of effort to work together with HW vendors so that when products go out on mainstream platforms there is widespread support and functionality. MS has not simply overlooked this issue and said that it's the problem of the HW vendors to solve some time after release. Of course it is a big part of the role of the HW vendors to provide drivers. Out of the box functioning is simply something that I've come to expect and gotten used to, and the degree of this non-functioning under Linux is much greater, and even that would be an understatement to some users considering what it can take to fix it. I'd like to see it improve, and I think progress would be much greater and adoption much simpler for users with effort on both sides in the development area.

Virtualization is a great smokescreen for covering up some of these issues, and if it was enough for me, I'd be happy.

Well, thanks for the discussion. It's been "fun". I'd better get back to fixing my [expletive virtualized] installation.

Windows X64 anyone? I don't run it, but I read the nightmarish H/W support almost every day right here.

My problem with Windows as the host OS for my virtualization? Can't shut the GUI off. In linux, I don't even have to have (and for a server, pretty much never do) an X server/GUI. When I shut that off, I save lots of CPU cycles and memory that can be used for my services and applications.

Reason 2 is (imho) Linux/Unix offer better memory management. Use all my physical memory before hitting swap please.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: drag
Umm... If Creative provides shifty drivers for Windows that cause bluescreens and whatnot is it Microsoft's fault?

Obviously not, but also obviously MS has put in lots of effort to work together with HW vendors so that when products go out on mainstream platforms there is widespread support and functionality. MS has not simply overlooked this issue and said that it's the problem of the HW vendors to solve some time after release. Of course it is a big part of the role of the HW vendors to provide drivers. Out of the box functioning is simply something that I've come to expect and gotten used to, and the degree of this non-functioning under Linux is much greater, and even that would be an understatement to some users considering what it can take to fix it. I'd like to see it improve, and I think progress would be much greater and adoption much simpler for users with effort on both sides in the development area.

Virtualization is a great smokescreen for covering up some of these issues, and if it was enough for me, I'd be happy.

Umm.. No it wasn't. I was trying to explain that A. the point of virtualization is that it's platform independant.. and B. that Microsoft is behind everybody else in terms of progress.

As far as the nvidia's drivers go..

Microsoft gets good hardware support because if the hardware vendors don't support Microsoft... They go out of business. Bankrupt. Everybody fired. This isn't a nice-nice thing. Of course Microsoft want's to provide a good end-user so they do signed drivers and such... Except often the unsigned drivers are actually superior. (depending on what is going on, of course)

The reason that Linux doesn't have good hardware support for some Nvidia motherboards is Nvidia's fault. When Nvidia fights the Linux developers what do you expect to happen? ****** driver support, that's what is going to happen.

But the Linux developers still try and you end up with reverse engineered drivers like the Forcedeth">http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/nforce-net-to-forcedeth.htm</a> stuff.

See? Not only is the driver reverse engineered with no aviable documentation or anything of that nature.. It is superior to the binary nvidia drivers in terms of performance, stability, and ease of use. And that is with a binary driver developed by nvidia with full access to any and all internal company documentation and whatnot.

Of course reverse engineering takes time, and since the kernel and drivers developers don't have access to the hardware until it's released to the public then driver development is going to lag behind quite a bit.

If Linux developers can have good and proper support for many different manufacturers and lots of different hardware and motherboards. Via motherboards work, no problem. AMD motherboards work, no problem. Intel motherboards work, no problem. All of these have good drivers support and during a install pretty much everything is detected and configured automaticly with no user intervention. If all of those pretty much 'just work', but Nvidia's doesn't. What do you suppose the issue is?

Now if you were to go and talk about Wifi card development.. there are some issues there with the Linux kernel developer's bad choices. Also there are legal issues with having open source drivers for wireless devices that let end users choose power and frequency settings that would require a radio license. Then there are the normal bad-apple hardware makers that have increadably bad attitudes and refuse to work with people. So this has ended up with Linux having relatively poor wifi card support until fairly recently.. But even then there were hardware makers that worked with Linux developers (such as Intel and Ralink) that had very good drivers aviable for a long while now.

 

[Nothinman]

Of course, that is an important role for virtualization, but it's hardly the only role. Moreover this role is on somewhat shaky grounds itself, because if should not be necessary on a decent platform + application set to have multiple OS's running on a single box.

It's not about necessity, it's about saving hardware costs. Buying one big server is usually cheaper than buying 10 small ones. And add on top of that power requirements and heat output and you can save a decent amount by consolidating a few servers. And for dev servers it's a huge win because you can snapshot the server, break it and roll back in a few seconds and duplicating new servers is now a matter of copying a few files.

Add in complexity of configuration, application conflicts, down time, lack of adequate load balancing and scheduling tools themselves, etc., it makes practical sense in some cases to virtualize. However, in theory at least, at best it's a patch on failures upstream somewhere.

That sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

Now why would I virtualize on MS if I could save that license cost and virtualize on Linux?

Because you need to run something that only runs on Windows? Or more likely because you've got a gold account with MS and so you get lots of free licenses for their stuff already.

and I think that ignoring the hardware support issue is a stretch from reality. If hardware support was not a problem for Linux, virtualization of it on MS would not be as important.

IMO hardware support isn't a problem for Linux. It runs just fine, IMO better than Windows, on at least 4 completely different configurations here. Also IMO, you're the one out of touch with reality. I don't know a single person who runs Linux inside of VMWare because it doesn't support their native hardware, infact this is the very first time I've even heard someone consider that a real reason. Virtualization of Linux inside of VMWare is important because MS is admitting that most shops are mixed platform and they know they can't compete if they don't support systems other than their own.

 

[drag]

Here is a very very interesting article explaining Intel's and AMD's virtualization software.

It also explains how these technologies tie directly into Microsoft's original 'Palladium' push that was originally suppose to be part of Longhorn/Vista.. which has been dropped.

It explains the role of Hypervisor like Xen or Vmware's 'server' editions. What they do, what they are for, and so on and so forth. Why they are a big deal.

It explains why the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is needed to combat security problems created by these new virtualization extensions.

It explains how all these things are tied together....

I found it very educational.

read it here

edit:

I wonder.. Does the Microsoft virtual server 2003 r2 stuff support TPM items? Or is that going to have to wait till Longhorn server?
linux support (in the kernel) for TPM has been present since 2.6.12 kernel.
Also here is a weird-ass thing I found from IBM about their research into creating a VIRTUAL tpm instance rather then having it nessicarially embedded directly into the hardware.. at least all the functionality of it. Completely bizzare.

 

[Sevastra27]

Sweet, maybe microsoft is starting to get the hint....