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Linux Business

VMware Signs Deal with Microsoft 187

Posted by emmett from the ewige-blumenkraft dept.
ken_i_m writes "VMware has signed an OEM deal with Microsoft to offer various flavors of Windows pre-installed with their product. Here is VMware's news release." Don't get too angry about this; if you're using VMware, you're probably loading up a version of Windows anyway.
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VMware Signs Deal with Microsoft More

VMware Signs Deal with Microsoft

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  • Re:VMWare has no choice (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You raise an interesting (though unpopular) point - Has linux peaked?

    Win 2000 is stable (though the hardware requirements make it unusable for most computers made before 1999).

    Mac OS X is is stable & unixy. I know of quite a few people who have switched from mklinux/linuxppc to use OS X Server for server purposes.

    BeOS personal Edition - it has some limitations, and some people are complaining, but the interest in it is incredible - are Linux advocates looking for something else that's free, but user friendly

    Linux stocks are at record-low prices - and dropping. Net & tech stocks are also off, but the linux decline preceeded them.

    So has linux peaked?

  • Re:Win 98/2K only or VMWare/Win/Linux? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >only supports 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768.

    Not true. VMWare will run at whatever resolution your Xserver is running at. This goes for color depth as well.

    Regarding SC, for example, it requires 256 colors at 640x480, no more. If you are running your Xserver in 16bit, it won't work, because it can't switch to 256 color. On top of this, it requires DirectX, which is not yet supported under VMWare.

    That said, I am aware of people running SC in vmware. Myself, I just run it with WINE. ?:^)

  • Re:IF I EVER... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, Windows isn't that bad. I wouldn't want to use it to do anything important, but there are boatloads of games for Windows. And the Blue Screen of Death matches the furniture in my room. :-)
  • Well, I am anti-Microsoft, but that doesn't affect what I posted. Any story we post with 'Microsoft' in the name tends to causes a furor, and I was trying to advise people to look at the bright side of this; that VMware was going to be able to do a lot more.

    --Emmett

    Oh, and check out #slashdot on irc.openprojects.net.

  • I'm not Rob. I'm Emmett. We're completely different people.

    --Emmett

  • This should be fine for MS-DOS 98, but IIRC on an NT system some of the low level system stuff has to match between the real machine and the virtual machine (e.g. the HAL).

    As far as I understand it, VMWare presents the same machine to the OS running in it, regardless of what your hardware is. They fake a generic NIC card, video adapter, and SCSI adaptor (and probably other things), so you should always end up with the "same" hardware under VMWare.

  • I have several legacy apps that often require the bare-bones direct access to the hardware that only DOS can provide. One of these days, I hope someone makes an emu, vm, loader, driver, or something that will let me run them.

    Here's a short list:

    Second Reality
    Panic
    Optic Nerve
    Crystal Dream II

    Anyone get any of these running under Linux?

    --Threed
    Browsing at +2, or else on my Cell Phone. I see no trolls.
  • Try rebooting the cable modem. Unfortunately your ip will probably change but if that is undesireable spend the 25$ or so and get a TZO account. This works pretty good for me. Whenever I want to play some games that can't easily be Masq'd I just switch the cables from my masq box to my desktop reboot the cable modem and run winipcfg and release and renew the dhcp lease. I'm in the cincinnati area so YMMV.
  • Isn't using Windows enough of a tax?
    Not quite.
    Using Windows is taxing.
    Upgrading Windows is both a tax and taxing.
  • VMware makes it possible for me to use Linux as my desktop OS at work. I have to run NT for things like Rational Rose and for reading/editing all those freakin' MS Word docs. But I can't recommend my setup to others because of setup hassles such as setting a second hardware profile on NT and replacing the default Xserver. (I haven't tried version 2.0 yet so I don't know if it's any less time consuming.) With VMware Ready to Run, I can now recommend Linux to a lot more people. It's still not perfect though because it won't be a dual boot system.
  • Thank you for reminding me to keep my treshold on +2
  • I'm running OS/2 Warp 4 right now (and most of the time). My Web-browsers directory has in it:

    Netscape Communicator 4.61
    Netscape Communicator 4.04
    Netscape Navigator 2.02
    HotJava 3.0
    HotJava 1.15
    Lynx/2
    WebExplorer 1.2
    Sslurp! 1.6 (site downloader)

    If I wanted, I could run the very alpha Opera/2, or several versions of Netscape/W16, Opera/W16, or (rumor has it), IE3/W16.

    Also, using XFree/OS2 provides a platform on which a number of browsers have been ported (and the GIMP, which is about all I use XFree/OS2 for myself).

    So there are quite a few web-browsing options under OS/2. And even most unix shells, shell tools, good editors, ports of all my favorite compilers. Overall, a nice place to work.
  • Who on earth is Jon Katz and why do trolls keep on about him/her/it?
  • I've developed a tremendous distaste for commercial software since I started using linux, BUT I have to say vmware is quite nice. I'm using it right now to run windows under slink and that is where windows belongs, in a cage.

    That said, what the fuck is with the stupid "tux in a business suit" icons? Gee, that's sooooo cute. I hate suits at work and I don't need to see my favorite mascot disgraced in this way.

    Can we at least have tux dressed up like Che or something to even things out? Sheesh.
  • stick with dual booting.

    It's fine for most applications you can't run in linux and things like that but it is too slow for games.
  • 1. Maybe not everyone is as good at getting things to run under wine as you, personally I've had little luck with it and it is slow as hell. Anything more complicated than notepad seems to have problems
    2. Just because you can't think of a reason to run a virtual win9x machine in linux doesn't mean there isn't one. Where I work, I need access to a MS proprietary mail system, windows only netware management tools, MS Office, and a host of other such bullshit. I need linux to keep my sanity only, because honestly I could do without it and use some windows ssh client to manage the linux machines. However, I would go insane using windows all the time.

  • Oh? Hmmm. They describe their product as being for NT and W2K. What the heck, maybe I'll take it for a spin and stick FreeBSD on my system... or a Linux distro...

  • I haven't bothered with VMWare yet because it doesn't support Win98SE and I think it's gonna be kludgy to go from Win to WinLinux, fire up Linux VMWare then re-launch Win98SE.

    If VMWare are getting in bed with MS, they'll be working hand in hand with a company that hasn't shown a whole lot of interest in maintaining backward compatibility. This reinforces my suspicion that VMWare won't bother extending their product's capability back to '9x.

    If I've proven myself clueless, at least make your flames educational, OK? I'm man enough to be insulted if at least I get to learn something in the process.

  • Just a random thought. People are fairly reluctant to go thru the hassle of installing, for example, Win2k. This way they can install, and try out without messing up their system.

    Maybe MS thinks that people are finding out their OS sucks and won't install it.

  • How much you wanna bet that Win2001 or some such version will have the installation and packaging aspects of 'ready to run' built in. If I were cynical, which of course I'm not, I'd bet that MS will use VMWare technology to run Win2k in a VMWare session on Linux on a S/390 mainframe and then say...'see it's enterprise ready' !!!
  • I'm glad VMware can make some bucks from MS. That's a good company and cash will help them to develop VMware further.
  • Yep, it does eliminate the pain of re-installing -- you can just nuke the old disk image and reinstall the original. Of course, you keep all your personal files in your home directory on Linux, which you share via SAMBA.

  • Bundling pre-installed Windows with VMWare is a slam dunk. I'm quite glad that VMWare made this move, because it means that it will be cheaper for me to install Win2k on my VMWare box (after I upgrade my computer, blah blah blah :)). It also makes it that much easier to poke and prod Win2k for flaws on top of my Linux box.

    And additionally, it will save you money if you want your cable modem to be installed on your Linux box...:)

    And we can soon give VMWare and Microsoft the award for best Linux application (VMWare with WinNT :)).

  • SIGH (Score:1)

    by DavidTC ( 10147 )
    So...they are bundling a version of Windows to run under Windows? I somehow don't see the logic there.

    Okay, at least try paying a

    little attention. This is to run Windows under other operating system. Now, yes, the other operating systems might Windows NT, but they're more likely to be Linux or FreeBSD or whatever else can be used as a VMWare host OS.

    -David T. C.

  • A lot of the instability of NT comes from poorly written drivers. By using tightly controlled VM drivers which interface with Linux drivers (which hopefully are more stable) you get a more stable system.
  • They gain the following:
    1. Following the "Windows Everywhere" strategy, they get a copy of Windows9X/NT/00 on machines that otherwise wouldn't run Windows.
    2. While the press release doesn't say this, it is a reasonable assumption that MSFT will get some sort of licensing fee from VMWare for each copy sold.
    3. By increasing the number of PCs running Windows, MSFT gains more potential users for other MSFT software such as Office or IE. This enables them to earn more revenues for copies of those products, too. This increases "lock in" at the corporate level ("sure, we can use Linux on the desktop for the geeks who want it, without giving up MS Word and MS Excel as our standard word processor and spreadsheet."). "Lock in" ensures future product sales.

    Finally, I think MSFT realizes that the battle for the desktop is over and they won. They don't need the monopoly on desktop OSes any more. They've got additional areas where they own the de facto standards (MS Word and MS Excel come to mind. IE to a lesser extent). I suspect that their attempt to settle w/ the Feds will revolve around lots of apparent sacrifices regarding their OS monopoly. They can afford it since they've got many other areas where they've locked in vast numbers of customers.

    This is a small sacrifce for MSFT, if any.
  • What's the point Ummm -- I'm a system admin. My company uses Outlook and Excell (with VB programs) extensively. I must be on windows to do those things, which I need to do multiple times a day. At the same time, i need to have a number of X-clients going monitoring systems, runing programs, playing quake ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h and other wise being productive. If I have to reboot everytime I need to be in Windows I will loose a ton of time. If I have multiple boxes I will waste money and waste a ton of space. If I have VMWare, I am happy, content and busy Quak^h^h^h^hworking.
  • Pump is a nice little program that tells the DHCP server that you want a new IP lease. Its kind of like running Winipcfg and clicking on "renew" except of course, pump is a command for Linux.

    It comes with Red Hat IIRC, I am using Mandrake 7 now and I had to use Rpmfind to get it. (Why it does not come with Mandrake I do not know...)
  • When I first installed VMWare on top of E, I couldn't believe how incredibly slow and bloated Windows felt.

    So what happens when someone loads up Linux in a window? It's slow, and feels bloated. This stifles the great thing about Linux by putting a plastic bag over it, and telling users that it choking is its own fault.

    In other words, "go back to Windows. It's faster."
  • Yep - RoadRunner is what I'm using, and it works just fine (for the most part - I'll get to that in a second). When the MCSE came over to 'install' it, he gave me the network card, I installed it, and booted up and ran pump - and it works.

    However, if anyone could help me with this, it would be nice:

    Whenever I shut down my net connection (on reboot or whatever), I can't reconnect to RoadRunner for several hours. I'm guessing that RR is not realizing that I've disconnected, and I have to wait for it to timeout. The reason I think this is because I can swap network card cables (I do IP masq'ing for our in-house LAN), and most of the time it will just connect.

    Does anyone know how to properly shut down the connection? I've tried 'pump -k' and 'pump -r', but that doesn't help.
  • The $300 you spend on VMware could have gotten you a mondo-big hard drive for your primary box. With LILO, you could configure it to boot many different OSes (i.e. multipe versions of Windows) from different partitions on the drive. Without needing to spend the bux on VMware.

    But it takes a lot longer to cut and paste from GVIM running in Linux/X to the Win95 box, and pasting into a WinNT box, as well as drag and dropping files files between the Win9x and Samba running on the Linux box.

    The great thing about VMWare is that it is very seamless. AND My win9x VMWare boxes are much more stable than any box I've seen. And reboot time of newer, bigger machines is very annoying. There is a time and place for Dual-Boot (Gaming), but in a work environment, VMWare is much more practical. Allowing me to do all my primary work under Linux, and run Office and Outlook under Windows.



    -- Keith Moore
  • It could be another concession to weaken the perception of MS as an aggressive monopoly.
  • You need to check your facts. Microsoft has lost in the palmtops: WinCE has about 10% of the market, PalmOS has 90%. MS just renamed WinCE to Windows Powered.

    I also question the cable boxes, and since the X box won't be out for at least another 18 months, who knows what will happen in the gaming console market.
  • VMWare can host each machine in less than 128 Megs, and doesn't use much memory itself. So if you can configure the guest OS to use say 32 megs, then each VMWare instance takes roughly 32megs + some overhead (lets say 8 megs for the sake of argument).

    Yes, you may want a machine with lots of RAM to run multiple OS's at once, but that doesn't mean that each instance will use up lots of RAM. I have a machine w/ 256 Meg RAM, and host multiple NT guests running under Linux, w/ no problem.
  • VMWare has allowed me to get more linux installed in my office. This deal with MS will only help in my efforts.

    I have found that I can install linux and VMWare with windows on a machine in our engineering dept and before long the user is spending more time using linux apps then windows apps.
  • your comment is too cranky and whiny too be worthy of a more intelligent response
  • having been moderated up 1 to Funny, and then down 1 to for Troll, i seem to have learned my lesson:

    moderators suck. fucking humorless assholes.
  • MS has had deals before that seem to
    contradict their "us or nobody" approach.

    see citrix [citrix.com]

    js
  • I wonder what the perfomance of a MAME running on Windows 98 VM running inside of Vmware running on Windows NT running inside of Vmware running on Redhat ...

    Nice thought...however, VMware has some detection mechanism that will not allow you to run a virtual machine inside another virtual machine. I understand this would create some rather nasty problems.
  • Imagine for $10 getting a variety pack that included compressed VMWare images of the *BSDs, Solaris 8, several distributions of Linux, EROS, and BeOS?

    And for just $210 you could get *BSDs, Solaris 8, several distros of Linux, EROS, BeOS, AND Windows. (monopo-what? price-gouga-who?)

    --
  • Flamebait???

    I can only assume that I hit too close to the truth for somebody.
  • I'm betting that the real reason for this is that there is a demand to run some non-Windows OS along with Windows.

    I'm betting that my motivation will be to run Windows without having to reboot the base O/S when Windows bluescreens. A Win98 window on a Linux box sounds about right.

    Besides, I need some excuse to buy that dual Celeron motherboard.

    --R
  • I think we could legally create some VFS's that have RedHat/Caldera/SuSE/FreeBSD/Mandrake/whatever distro is your favorite now, and distribute them on the net. Sounds like a great idea!

  • Microsoft probably sees VMWare as just another OEM. I mean... look at it! They, Microsoft, probably would prefer that if you were to purchase VMWare, you'd have to purchase a copy of Windows with it or do without. I, for one, have an old licensed copy of Win95 that would do just fine thank you very much! I see no reason to buy another copy everytime I buy a new machine - virtual or otherwise.

    I will consider VMWare a product that is recomendable by me until such time as you can't buy it without purchasing another copy of Windows.

    I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to purchase VMWare.
  • If you ordered the CD version of VMWare for Windows NT/2000 1.0, you got a second CD with a copy of SuSE 6.1 preinstalled on a disk image.

    It was rather nice. I'd always wanted to try SuSE out, but never had the time. This was so easy and the image ran under my copy of VMWare for Linux as well.
  • "And what exactly do they lose by that?"

    What they lose is they legitimize a platform that they often tell people is "not up to the job" and "not robust enough". Plus they help pave the way to loosen their death grip on the market. If I were an IT manager, i'd look at this and think. Hmm maybe I really can replace windows on the desktop, get a lot more stable environment but not have to give up all those bloody applications that i paid through the nose for.
  • It's not a question of resolution, it's a question of Direct X. The games all now use Direct X for direct hardware control... something that the VMWare driver doesn't support (yet?). Anything that doesn't require direct hardware support should work just fine, though. (So you'll still have incompatibilities with your unsupported hardware.)

    It's a nice solution for what it is, but it's not going to put a full Windows box on your desktop.

  • Pretty much doubt it. Though I'm starting to come under the persuasion that Linux is a great server OS but not the best of desktop OS's. When I'm at home running Linux it feels almost like running NT Server for a workstation. I'm of the opinion that we need Linux as the server and something like BeOS for the desktop. I would definately prefer an OSS desktop though. I came across AtheOS [funcom.com] the other day. It looks designwise similar to BeOS and it is GPL. Unfortunately I couldn't try it out b/c my video card isn't supported. Hardware support is still a bit lacking.
  • VMware has been a boon to me. Not only can I run win98 (slowly), but I get to experiment with FreeBSD 3.1 and Solaris 2.6. I had trouble installing BOTH of these OS's on naked hardware. It's nice to finally get a chance to use them.

    Of course, OS/2 didn't like vmware AT ALL. I tried to get win3.1 loaded, but I lost the last disk!! Probably not that big a deal.

    I will be able to try out other linux distro's as well. VMware is a great tool. Now, I need more HD space...
  • Not quite true - OS/2 guest support for VMware is now available as 'experimental', i.e. unlikely to work that well but should do something. See their website for details, probably the Support section.
  • The pre-installed images would be delivered as virtual disk files, i.e. they could only ever be run from under VMware. Hence it would be quite easy to get the install to work reliably (after all, NT works very well on the VMware virtual hardware).
  • Re SMP - see the VMware support site, I think this is covered (though you may need to re-install NT onto a virtual disk then mount the other disks as data disks).

    Re BeOS - I agree, it's a matter of getting Be interested in this. BeOS 4.5 does get halfway through the boot sequence...
  • Exactly - I suspect VMware did quite a bit of testing to find out exactly which hardware ran NT, Win98 and other OSs with high stability, then worked out which hardware was easy to emulate, and chose the intersection for their VM spec.

    Of course, the corollary for this is that if you buy an AMD PCnet NIC, SB16, and so on, it should be ultra stable at running NT...

    I wouldn't really recommend NT+VMware+Linux as an elegant solution for reliable applications, but if there's an app that runs only on Windows, it's not a bad approach.

    For a dedicated 'Windows' workstation, you could even run VMware instead of a window manager, in full screen mode, so the system appears to boot 'right into Windows'. If you ran this on another X display (e.g. :1, leaving :0 as the main Linux+X display), you could make it easy to toggle into a full-screen Windows session. However, you would lose Linux/open source brownie points big time :)
  • One other datapoint - I had problems getting Active Directory to install on Win2000 RC2 native (repeatedly locked up the machine completely), so I re-installed onto a virtual disk within VMware. And of course, Active Directory ran just fine (if a little slowly, Win2000 is heavier on the machine at least compared to NT, when running on VMware).

    YMMV of course...
  • It's a DirectX issue, NT has a very old version. You might want to try running Win2000 or Win98 in a VM. However, the VMware emulated hardware is quite basic - e.g. SB16 sound - so you might still have problems.

    VMware is not really intended for playing games at the moment - stick to dual booting until it gets better, or buy Linux games :)
  • IIRC, you can already get VMWare for Windows with a preloaded Linux distribution ( SuSE, IIRC ). It's a great idea IMO, it gives users a chance to try Linux without having to deal with hardware support problems.

  • I wonder what the perfomance of a MAME running on Windows 98 VM running inside of Vmware running on Windows NT running inside of Vmware running on Redhat running inside of Connectixes Virtual PC running on a Mac G4/450 would be?

    Aside from MAME, it'd be interesting to run some standard benchmark, or nearly standard, like Bytemark or SPEC (if someone with the $$$ for SPEC was interested) to see how much the CPU bogs down with each layer of emulation. Theoretically, if VMWare just passes x86 instructions to the processor, each additional instance should only suffer a small bit, rather than getting completely mangled.

    Alternatively, one could run slackware inside of debian inside of openlinux inside of redhat inside of turbo linux... yikes!

  • While this is both a great move for VMWare and potentially a great new product for consumers, I have my doubts about how well a "one size fits all" preinstall can work on all machines.

    This should be fine for MS-DOS 98, but IIRC on an NT system some of the low level system stuff has to match between the real machine and the virtual machine (e.g. the HAL). I wonder if VMWare intends to have different images for different configurations... This could be a real pain for the user.

    Of course, I've met some of the guys who work on this and I have faith in their ability to work it out.

  • As long as VMWare is still selling a version with no operating system (and it appears they intend to continue doing so) I see no reason to complain about a "tax" on the Windows-bundled versions.

    To me this just seems like an even better tool for those IT admins who want to start deploying other operating systems in their organizations.

  • That's the idea but it might not be quite that easy. At least with the version I ran (v1) it wasn't able to translate between two different HAL's - I tried to run a single processor VM on a dual processor machine and it choked. I had to change the way NT was installed on the real machine.

    Maybe all of this is fixed in v2. In which case, it's good news all around.
  • Essentially, this is an admission of an inferior product

    Oh come on, it is no such thing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if VMWare started including a linux distro for all the people using VMWare for Windows, so that they could run linux in a box without having to go download a distro over a phone line. (Actually, that's not a bad idea at all. And it'd cost them next to nothing.) Would that make linux the inferior operating system?

  • Microsoft cares about one thing: selling copies of their software.

    If they can sell Windows, Office, and add-ons to people running these under VMware, it's no different than selling Windows, Office, and add-ons to people running these on actual x86 boxes.

    The problem for Microsoft comes about when people move from a Windows-only box to running Windows under VMware to not running Windows at all. But historically, they've been better at creating good applications than creating good operating systems.

    If they can reduce the operating system problem to an application level (more features) without having to worry about reliability (hey, just reboot or restart VMware), that's good for them.

    'Course, you could argue they already do this... :)


    ------------------
  • Cable modem? You know, just about every cable modem provider works fine under Linux -- if your's does then you're probably getting shafted, or are just confused. Check out the HowTo.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Umm, excuse me? They are going to package windows as a client OS inside their *linux* product. Why install windows inside windows? They've had their windows product a long while and already have (IIRC) a deal with Redhat to package Redhat with vmware, so that NT users can install linux under vmware, this just turns it around, to sell pre-capsulated windows with vmware for linux
  • <me too>
    My linux box has worked flawlessly with three different cable modems on two different services (@Home - static, and Bresnanlink - dynamic).
    </me too>

    What I liked was the last guy said, oh, well you probably know enough about networking to get this running, so unless you want help with it right now, I won't screw with your stuff...

    I like it when people realize you have a clue, so they don't insist on 'I have to install this for you and screw up netscape, all your settings, etc...' (and support afterwards is still free).

    Question though - what is 'pump'? Is that a util that RR gives you? Never heard of it....
  • You must first admit that there is a problem.

    This seems to show that Microsoft is beginning to admit that it is in denail about it's inferior products.

    After the admission you must discover what you are in denial about.

    Microsoft now must identify which products are inferior. (IMHO every single one of them except freecell)

    After discovering your areas of denial you must fix them.

    For Microsoft I think this is impossible. Once a project hits a certian point you must scrap it. Kinda like a nuclear explosion. Once the Plutonium or Uranium starts to FIZZ you can't stop it.

  • imp worried: The only down side I can see to this is if, in the future, the purchase doesn't become optional.

    At US$300 plus, they could OEM Win9x in there and hardly notice. I was all set to buy a copy when I thought it was $99 but it ain't worth three times that per seat.

    Besides which, I'm still having fits with making the networking work on the eval copy.

  • A good point. I'm trying to get rid of Windows, but it would be nice to have the option to buy a bundle so that I can mostly run Linux and use VMWare to run the Windows-only games that I have.

    Like The Sims ...

  • The key word here is "offer." If you so desire, you can get the "Ready To Run" version of VMWare with an image of the version of Windows of your choice, for a price.

    Sounds good to me. Then you don't have to make a boot floppy, FDISK and format your imaginary partition, sit through the installation which goes even slower than normal since it's running in VMware... And it gives me a good reason to get a completely legitimate windows license. :)
  • VMware does not support OS/2 as a guest operating system, and VMware doesn't run on OS/2. That pretty much makes your point moot.
  • Hey, I must be truly 3133t. I used to surf the net from OS/2 2.1...

    Seriously, OS/2 has tcp/ip and has had it for a long time. If you don't have "Warp Connect", which is the default LAN install, you have to add it as an add-on. I bet that's what you had.

    Browsers were a problem. There was a version of Netscape for it at one point, but I don't think it did Java. I had better luck installing an X Server on OS/2 and running Netscape off of a Unix box.

  • > You can pay $200 for an upgrade copy of W2k, wow.

    If you buy a motherboard & CPU you can get Windows 2000 Pro OEM, the full package, not merely an upgrade, for $135. I just did last week, and it arrived yesterday.

    I haven't installed it yet, but I must say, the CD is beautiful! They put a "holographic" image on it. If it were a Pokemon card, it would be worth $100 easy. My SGI/Debian CD looks positively dowdy in comparison. So even if the OS is unusably bad, which isn't very likely, I feel I will have gotten my money's worth.

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

  • Is it really a bad thing that Micros~1 is acknowledging that their product should be run with VMWare? I run Windows in VMWare for one reason.. I can run linux ALL THE TIME and just boot up Windows when and if I need it (about once a month in my case) without rebooting my system. I think this is a victory for the people who want to migrate off Windows onto linux (like myself). It allows us to run all our linux stuff and occasionally run those few Windows apps that we can't live without until they're ported.
  • Warp 3.0, original version, has no networking support, true. But there was an updated version, called Warp Connect, which did. The latest client is now 4.0, which has full TCP/IP & SMB support, and very nice it is too. Netscape 4.61 etc. IBM recently released a new version of the server version, Warp Server for e-business, and a new client based on the same kernel is rumoured to coming in September. Whatever anyone says, OS/2 is NOT dead. There's still lots of us left using it, and the GUI beats anything I've seen before by miles. It's far more object-ified than ANYTHING else, much nicer. But I guess that's just my opinion. Linux is nice, too - so's this BeOS 5 I'm just playing with. But seriously, I would recommend OS/2 to anyone who's interested. Have a look at http://www.os2ss.com/
  • Well, Since Linux companies are plummeting in value, and companies who deal with linux are realizing that there is no money to be made with it, this is the natural evolution. VMWare has got to sell itself as a MICROSOFT
    compatible product, that lets you run linux, not the other way around. IBM is getting out of Redhat, and, as Redhat goes, so goes linux. Once Dell dumps linux (soon), Linux will be regulated back as a Fringe OS.. Then you know
    how the Mac/BeOS people feel.

    Is there any evidence that dell is going to drop linux support in the near future? I would like so hard evidence for this one.
  • The only reason I'd buy VMware would be to run Linux in Linux, a kind of supper-chroot, for web based stuff.

    If you buy OS/2 you're already paying for a copy of Windows, since IBM pays Microsoft a royalty on most copies of OS/2 sold (Not OS/2 for Windows but I don't think you can find that anymore.)

    So if you buy vmware to run OS/2 (Assuming that's possible) you'll most likely be paying Microsoft 3 times for Windows -- one for the pre-load on your machine, one for VMware and one for OS/2.

    Microsoft must think that's amusing.

  • I use vmware.I'm a web developer and I spend a lot of time testing my pages in different browsers. I used to have a bunch of machines with different configs. win95/3.x browsers, win98 4.0 browsers, soon win2k/5.0 browsers, and a 3.1 machine with others. Now, I have two machines linux with 3 vmware 'windows' an a native Win box. (drivers are not the same for color checking in vmware). I love the fact that I can test different browsers on one machine. Besides the virtual networking is really cool.

    -- Andy

  • Can't be a tax, must be a fine, because, A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
  • "VMware Ready to Run will allow customers to run Microsoft Windows as an additional operating system without any of the pain of an install,"

    O.K., so you eliminate the pain of the Windows install. To me that's only the beginning of the pain, reguardless of. I wonder if it also eliminates the pain of reinstalling?

  • 17) Now I want to overclock this bad boy 18) Yes, but can I run Beowulf on that? 19) Taco sux
  • Oops, sorry. My mouse was sticking and I double clicked the Submit button.

    kwsNI
  • "Windows Tax"
    Isn't using Windows enough of a tax?

    Office is where their money comes from anyway.
    Don't forget Asheron's Call.

    kwsNI

  • from O'Reilly's Learning Debian Gnu/Linux:

    If you have the commercial version... mount the cd... locate install.exe... and change to that directory.

    type: wine -display localhost:0 -winver win95 install.exe

    choose 'no' to install directx, other defaults are generally acceptable.

    It only works in linux in 256 640x480.

    To play: cd to the install directory and '

    wine -display localhost:0 -winver win95 -depth 8 \ > -geom 640x480 Starcraft.exe

    (it assumes your windows partion is mounted as /c) I don't have the game, so I havn't had a chance to try it, poor poor pitiful me

  • Now I would like to know if they have sign a deal with some Linux corps (RedHat, Suse, Debian ...) or *BSD groups to distribute their distros with VMWare for NT.

    Maybe this new deal keep them from distributing another OS ???

  • Maybe they're hedging their bets in case they HAVE to take Windows back to being a shell, which is all most of their market cares about anyway ("What's a.. kur-nul?"). I'll believe it when I see it, but nothing would make me happier than to see M$ admit that the problem of OS design is simply beyond them. Betchya they could write a spiffy GUI for Linux.

    Pipe-dreams aside, I really wonder why M$ does so poorly at a (semi-) solved problem when they have an essentially infinite amount of money and (AFAIK) talent. Maybe Gates', "They're users, they won't care" attitude spreads through the intranet there. Or maybe there really is a god.

    Or maybe Gates hacks on the release code every now and then, and the last guy who changed his code was never heard from again.

  • Ok, so I'm suspicious (Score:3)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @08:14AM (#1160655)
    I can see that this is good for Vmware as it solves some potential worries about M$ attacking them through licensing schemes that only allow windoze to be run on actual hardware. I guess this is good for VMware users because it might mean that windoze runs better on VMware and better supports the virtual machine. But what I don't get is why this is good for M$, what do they gain? What they lose is that they are helping people make the break to a more stable platform and relegating windoze to be simply an application launcher and runtime environment.

  • Re:It has to be said... (Score:3)

    by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Thursday March 30, 2000 @09:43AM (#1160656)
    > I wonder what the perfomance of a MAME running on Windows 98 VM running inside of Vmware running on Windows NT running inside of Vmware running on Redhat running inside of Connectixes Virtual PC running on a Mac G4/450 would be?

    Nonexistent. I can almost guarantee it wouldn't work. VMware didn't run itself recursively last I checked, for one.

    You want real-world perverse twists tho, I plan to run Linux under FreeBSD by running it in VMware under Linux emulation :)

  • MS Bug Fixing (Score:3)

    by BranMan ( 29917 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:48AM (#1160657)


    Maybe this is just Microsoft's way of fixing bugs in the Windoze operating systems? I can see it now - Microsoft Win2001 installs Linux, VMWare, and their OS. OS runs on VMWare, with the setting tricked out so it cannot corrupt itself into uselessness, and viola! It will be at least as stable as Windows 3.1 (I remember those days - it crashed often, but I never had to reinstall the OS).

    Wouldn't that be a hoot? The system could also be "journaled" through VMWare so that the OS from before the last five software installs was accessable. Then you could "undo" a software install that fsck'd up the DLLs for other programs.

    Hey, this could work....(Just my luck, trying to be funny and now I'm sitting here thinking seriously about it!).

    P.S. I know VMWare does not do all that now. (Just to head off the knuckleheads that flame^H^H^H^H^Hreply without "getting" the humor).

  • This caught my eye early this morning, and my first reaction was, "Are they going to raise the price of VMWare?" There's already a "Windows tax" on new PC's, is there going to be one on VMWare?

    I have to wonder if this is the first step of Micro$oft's plan to move into Linux territory. Why port Office to Linux, if they can keep all the Windows-to-Linux converts using Office? Office is where their money comes from anyway.

    I treat this in the same way that I treated the annoucement of Micro$oft's investment in Apple [slashdot.org] -- partly for the PR, partly to make it seem like they are playing nice in the business field, and partly to see if this can be a profitable outlet for Office and their other tools.

    darren


    Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]

  • Good, because... (Score:3)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:19AM (#1160659) Homepage Journal
    There is obviously no need to run Windows in a VM unless you want to run some other OS side-by-side with it. While I suppose this could be used to run WinNT and Win9x together, I'm betting that the real reason for this is that there is a demand to run some non-Windows OS along with Windows.

    And that's a good sign.

  • Re:RIP OS/2 (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:50AM (#1160660) Homepage Journal
    Visit here [jymis.com] for a starting point. Remember, any application that will run on Win 3.11 sans 32S will run on Warp 3. You'll probably be limited to an older version of Nutscrape, but one is available. Some applications of note: Gimp, Opera, mpg123, MAME, Doom..

  • But I gotta wonder. (Score:3)

    by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:58AM (#1160661)
    This is a good idea, but I'm just curious if this means they'll bundle more pre-installed OS images in the future. You know, like a pre-configured Solaris VM, or even another Linux distro that's already set up for a particular purpose. That would be pretty cool.
    Then I got to thinking... I wonder if there's any clause in the deal that prohibits VMWare from bundling a "ready-to-run" image of another OS down the road?
    And if so, would it even apply to a bundled Linux config?

  • HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEMOS!!! (Score:3)

    by neo-opf ( 167085 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:38AM (#1160662)
    I know this is a offtopic, but there isn't really a place to tell it, so I'm putting it here,

    IT'S HEMOS'S BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEMOS!!!!

  • Re:Why Angry? (Score:4)

    by CrosseyedPainless ( 27978 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:47AM (#1160663) Homepage
    Besides, why would a natural reaction to good news for a successful product that many power users use make people "angry". Do the story posters have to be so anti-MS?

    I'm guessing the poster is referring to the inevitable knee-jerk fizzing-at-the-mouth /. reaction to the merest insinuation that someone may be running Windows without a large-caliber weapon held to their head by a jack-booted MStormtrooper.

  • How about an OS Variety Pack (Score:5)

    by tilly ( 7530 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:36AM (#1160664)
    I am sure there would be a market for compressed images of multiple operating systems. Imagine for $10 getting a variety pack that included compressed VMWare images of the *BSDs, Solaris 8, several distributions of Linux, EROS, and BeOS?

    Very handy for someone who wants to play around, or for a starting place for testing...

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Sounds good (Score:5)

    by imp ( 7585 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:16AM (#1160665) Homepage
    The press release said that this is optional. I know that this will be good for those people that wish to keep all their licensing P's and Q's in a row. Some of my systems came with Win98 preinstalled, so running them with vmware isn't a problem. Other of my systems didn't, and I had to go out and buy an extra copy of win98. If I had the option to purchase direct from vmware, it would save me a trip.

    The only down side I can see to this is if, in the future, the purchase doesn't become optional.

  • Making Windows stable (Score:5)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @08:26AM (#1160666)
    Actually you are quite close to the truth - Windows NT on top of VMware on Linux never, ever BSODs, whereas a similar NT-only system at work crashes every few weeks (happened today), while my NT laptop used to crash all the time when I used it a lot.

    VMware's website has a case study of a law firm who installed Linux and VMware in order to run Windows with fewer crashes - so this is not just my experience...

    One useful feature in VMware 2.0 is the 'suspend to disk' feature (like some laptops but no OS APM or ACPI support required). Currently you can only suspend to disk as part of suspending the VM.
    However, it would be possible to save the Windows or other OS state to disk in an identical way every 5 minutes or so (the save to disk is quite fast if you have enough memory as it goes to Linux buffer cache). This would mean you could recover from any Windows/other crash, no matter how bad, back to your state as of N minutes ago.

    This is similar to some Windows products that recover your state, but is much more likely to be bullet proof since it's done through the VM mechanism.

    It would also be useful when testing out bleeding edge Linux kernels, of course...

  • Why Angry? (Score:5)

    by tomreagan ( 24487 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:18AM (#1160667)
    Why should we be angry about this? Microsoft is conceding that people run other operating systems, and that their product fits well in a window. By endorsing a product that puts theirs in a window, they admit that you might make other choices for your underlying system. Essentially, this is an admission of an inferior product - people can now get the Windows functionality without the penalties of actually running windows.

    And once we get people to run Windows in a Window, it becomes easier to open people up to completely different alternatives w/o legacy support.

    Besides, why would a natural reaction to good news for a successful product that many power users use make people "angry". Do the story posters have to be so anti-MS?

  • Comments Summary (Score:5)

    by tomreagan ( 24487 ) on Thursday March 30, 2000 @07:27AM (#1160668)
    This is a summary of all the comments at level 1 and below, so that everyone browsing at +2 can get an abstract.

    1.) M$ is evil.
    2.) MicroShaft will never win.
    3.) This program sucks. Release it under the GPL.
    4.) Hot grits!
    5.) The GPL sucks. Use a BSD-style license instead.
    6.) This is not news. We had this running years ago on my old system using a packaged version of and a box of .
    7.) Natalie Portman! Hot Grits!
    8.) Slashdot sucks now. I remember when the stories where written in C and posted in binary, so you had to disassemble before you could read.
    9.) 3y3 0wN j00r b0x!
    10.) This is old news. Macs have had this for years.
    11.) Damn linux heads! You just hate MS b/c you are jealous. MS Roolz! By the way, can someone teach me how to make a "boot disk"?
    12.) This is old news. This was invented at Xerox-PARC.
    13.) Too bad Amazon already has a patent!
    14.) I hate Jon Katz.
    15.) This is old news. This was invented by von Neumann and Turing in 1943. Read Cryptonomicon.
    16.) Hot grits! In my pants!

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