Red Hat Releases Windows Virtualization Code

dan_johns writes "Only one month after Microsoft released Linux code to improve the performance of Linux guests on Windows, Red Hat has done the reverse. Red Hat has quietly released a set of drivers to improve the performance of Windows guests hosted on Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The netkvm driver is a network driver and viostor is a Storport driver to improve the performance of high-end storage. This release includes paravirtual block drivers for Windows. Linux and Windows — virtually coming together at last."

Re:See!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it better when we all play nicely?

Gestures are good, but the proof is in the pudding. If Microsoft keeps up actions like this on a consistent basis, then good things will happen.

I just worry that this is more of a "Oh look, judge, the prosecution's arguments are invalid. Look at these two examples where we worked with open source! See?! We're not bad!"

Re:See!

[Ynot_82]

Since when has Linux /not/ played nicely with windows?

It's the other direction that's strewn with landmines

Re:See!

[wamerocity]

Landmines explode in either direction. I think it's more like the metal spikes coming out of the ground when you try to drive out of a parking garage without paying.

How is this new news?

[jamesh]

How is this new news? Xen and VMWare have had PV drivers for Windows for ages...

Quiet release

[dkleinsc]

Tell me, since when does a press release for Techworld + a front-page /. article count as releasing "quietly"?

Re:See!

[timeOday]

At least linux tries. But there is a fundamental shortfall at the moment - lack of support for a common filesystem! Windows only does NTFS, and NTFS-3G in linux grinds to a halt and freezes if you write substantial amounts of data. (This is most often noted by people trying to run VMWare images on an NTFS filesystem from a linux host, since suspending and snapshotting the guest take lots of space). That leaves you with fat32, and 2GB files aren't what they used to be.

Re:A good thing.

[spitzak]

Not really. The authors of the code wanted it released in such a way that it could be incorporated into the kernel source code. This meant it had to be GPL or the kernel maintainers would not add it. It is irrelevant whether or not releasing it some other way would violate the GPL, as the authors never intended to do that.

The real news is that somehow magically Microsoft was not forced to GPL every bit of code that they ever wrote, despite their repeated claims that the GPL is a "virus" that "infects everything it touches". They basically proved that they directly lied about this.

Re:See!

[maharb]

It might be a legit improvement and a strategic move from Microsoft. Windows doesn't care if they are being run in a VM on a Linux box. They still sell support, licenses and all that other good stuff. In fact, VM's might mean more windows installs, more license keys sold, more support requests, and more money for Microsoft. Why would they want to stop paying customers from doing what they want on their box. Hell, Microsoft is probably thrilled that people are running Linux on a licensed copy of Windows in a VM rather than native and they are probably thrilled that windows is being installed on VM's on a Linux host. Win win for Microsoft and Linux. Soon they will both have 100% market share. lol.

Re:Never happen with Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that would ever happen. VMware is owned by EMC, who are - for lack of a better word, massive. Massive enough to crush Parallels by blinking in its general direction.

If anyone buys anyone, it'll be EMC buying Parallels.

Penis

[Anonymous Coward]

All I *really* want for windows/linux interoperability is good EXT3 drivers for windows, that don't cause your drive to be fscked everytime you boot into linux. A good kernel driver for ntfs would be nice too - but fuse ntfs-3g works fairly well.

Re:Gentoo??

[dasmoo]

You call that beautiful? Just because you can make a desktop rotate doesn't mean you should.

Re:See!

[martyros]

MS is only playing nicely because it has to, for the time being. Namely:

• World Domination will fail if virtualization is near-ubiquitous and MS isn't involved. MS had to enter the virtualization market.
• Entering the market gives them a chance to do their "embrace, extend, extinguish" tricks to make sure they're dictating the rules (see RTF, IE, OOXML, C#, &c &c) instead of being dictated to.
• However, they aren't as strong in the server market as they'd like. Namely, they know that if Hyper-V won't run Linux servers well, large segments of the market won't use it -- even people who are normally of the "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" persuasion. That means limited market penetration, which means no market leverage, which means they're being told what to do instead of telling others what to do.
• Therefore, they have to make Linux run well on Hyper-V.

At least for now. If history is a guide, if MS does get established in this market, it will be using all of its old dirty tricks to fight against non-Microsoft servers, just as it's been consistently doing in other areas for the last 25 years.