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VMware version 1.0 released 133

Posted by Hemos from the down-load-begin dept.
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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VMware version 1.0 released More

VMware version 1.0 released

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  • Again, VMWare is NOT an x86 emulator. A Virtual Machine program is many orders of magnitude harder to create than a mere emulator

    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.

  • Freemware is good idea because.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

  • Me Too: NT vs Win98 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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).
  • ... where can I get a free Porsche please please please ...

  • Starcraft runs on VMWare! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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? :-)

  • VMware 1.0 speed? & $99 expensive? heck no (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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!

  • patent pending (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    VMware's web page indicates that their virtual platform technology is patent pending. I wonder if the freemware people are aware of this?

  • 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?

    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.

  • Re:open source vmware clone project under way (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 1999 @08:40PM (#1891073)
    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?

    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.

  • My VMWare review/experience (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 15, 1999 @08:05AM (#1891074)
    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).
    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 :) You can reboot Windows under Linux.
    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*
  • 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.
  • Posted by stodge:

    That is a pathetic thing to say. It really pisses me off when people expect everything for Linux to be free. I guess I'm the minority who think that commercial and free software can co-exist. I guess I'm also in the minority when I prefer to pay for my software legally.

  • Re:open source vmware clone project under way (Score:3)

    by gavinhall ( 33 ) on Saturday May 15, 1999 @12:44AM (#1891081)
    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.
  • The only reason I dual boot into NT at all these days is to use Visual Cafe. So when VMware came along I thought, *great*! I'll be able to use this for VisualCafe and I can stop dual-booting.

    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?

  • 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.
  • Perhaps look at their patent. Dosemu has very good support from the 386 architecture. But if you really start to look into the Intel architecture, virtualizing a 32bit i386 machine is EXTREMELY difficult, and they're most likely patenting more specific techniques....
  • The idea itself is not new, but most people thought it would be impossible to apply it to the x86 architecture.

    Rubbish. Check out this link [deja.com] 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.

  • I'd wager a guess at a slowdown of between %20 and %30... I've run a couple tests on my (rediculously underpowered for VMware) P200, and it performed around the speed of a P133.

    What I'm more interested in is what hardware specs have the largest effect on this.. Would a K7 with a full load of cache (8mb max) be faster than a K7 with 512kb because the emulation code is more likely to be in cache, or is it more a brute CPU speed problem?

    It performs astonishingly well for me, when you consider what it's doing. I'm definatley forking out $99 for it when I GET $99. If only there were drivers for my PBTV5 card in Linux (No, the PBTV3 and 4 drivers don't work. The PBTV5 aparently relies on some hardware on the motherboard to decode the video signal...)
  • Blah.. I MEANT to say, if only there were drivers for my PBTV5 card, I'd be in Linux 99% of the day on this box. I'm tempted to offer some kernel hackers telnet access to this box to see what they can find out about it.

    I'd even ship the card to them if it would make a difference (if they could be trusted to send it back), but it of course relies on crap on the MB (along with the onboard S3 ViRGE DX)...

    Idea: Any chance in hell VMware would get this thing running in a virtual Windows 98 session? I don't know if the PBTV software requires direct access to the hardware or not. I think it does...
  • 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.
  • Good point. Perhaps they do have a chance of having their patent finalized if they are only trying to patent a method of virtualizing an 32 bit Intel 386 archecture... I'm not a lawyer of course, and no, I haven't read their patent documentation. Maybe I will later and reply to myself with a more educated opinion..
  • Prior art will get them in the end... I doubt they could successfully defend this patent if needed, considering even DOSemu is basically a Virtual Platform-type thing.
  • Life is too short to make things that I can afford to buy.
  • Equally true.
  • 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?
  • How can you patent an idea that has existed for years? OK it's the first time we've seen this on a PC but the world doesn't revolve around Intel.

    Software patents are a bad idea and if VMware get this patent then there is something seriously wrong (but then most people would say there's definitely something wrong with the patents office!).

    --

  • Re:open source vmware clone project under way (Score:3)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @08:44PM (#1891099)
    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.
    --

  • Special introductory price (Score:3)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:16PM (#1891100)
    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 [vmware.com] ). I'm buying it!
  • What I'm more interested in is what hardware specs have the largest effect on this.. Would a K7 with a full load of cache (8mb max) be faster than a K7 with 512kb because the emulation code is more likely to be in cache, or is it more a brute CPU speed problem?

    As far as I know, it's software MMU... vmware simply swaps the registers in, runs for a few milliseconds, swaps out, repeat. Maybe the K7's branching logic / prediction will help here, but you still have the latency of memory swap. Unless you can make your main system memory as fast as the CPU L1/L2 cache, you won't be operating at 100% efficiency. Period. That's why dynamic compilation holds more promise...

    --
  • This is hardly a proof that the concept is practical.

    And it wasn't intended as such. It was claimed that people believed 386-on-386 was impossible. Claiming that it was believed to be impractical is a different argument.

    Had he been really convinced of the feasibility and marketability of the product, he would have done it himself.

    That's ridiculous. Something can be feasible and marketable and still not be worth doing. For example, it is feasible to raise corn on a lot near my home, and the zoning allows it, and there is a market available for the corn at the price it would take to grow it. However, the current owners are going to be making a hell of a lot more money building a strip mall and leasing retail space instead.

    Similarly, Alan Cox is a programmer of significant reputation who currently has a job at a fast-growing firm that distributes over half of the copies of the fastest-growing OS in the world. Why in the world would he abandon that in favor of what is at best a niche market product?

  • 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 [ibrium.se] 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.
  • What an odd comment! If one company makes a product, don't you think that other companies should be allowed to create competing products? If so, why shouldn't the free software community be able to do the same thing?

    I don't think there is any justification for creating a monopoly here, thank you very much.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • `Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?'
  • ...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 [att.com], 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.
  • 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
  • If the Open Source (TM) community creates a better product for a better price without stealing any code, there's nothing wrong with that.

    The problem is that the makers of VMWare apparently want to cover the costs through sales. Open source software usually has its costs "subsidized" by day-time jobs, parents, whatever. So the two aren't comparable.

    (What you effectively are saying is that it's okay for Microsoft to produce a "free" Internet Explorer because they can pay for it out of the sales of other products, while Netscape - when the browser was their sole product - needed to cover the costs through sales of that product.)

  • I had it running at 128 MB RAM with NT 4 as guest OS. It put some weight on Linux but unless you are into time-critical operations you actually can work within both OSes. Mouse grabbing etc worked just great, it was like having just another X app running.
    If you decide to run the guest full screen, speed approaches native state at a level of four fifth.
    They've certainly done a good job on this one and I will order a copy ASAP.

    HTH

    belbo

  • 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.

  • The README file in the 1.0 release says that DirectX is not supported in this release, and may work in the future.

    On another note, it seems to be running slow on my machine too...PII400/384MB,

    I'm planning on running Winbench and winstone on my emulated install and my desktop install (both Win98SE) and see what the REAL difference is....I'll post'em if anyone's interested...

  • 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?

  • 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.
  • 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

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by jkdufair ( 16805 )
    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
  • SCO MERGE has been around much longer than vmware, and proves that virtualization is possible on x86. Of course, some idiot is going to point out that MERGE only runs win95, but you still have to virtualize 386 protected mode for that. My guess is that SCO didn't think anyone would want to run windows NT on unix. Not that bad an assumption, I think.
  • 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
  • It would beat BOCHS speed wise - it does it's job completely differently to bochs, ie. virtualization, not emulation. And BOCHS doesn't require an x86 CPU.

    There is Dynamic Translation code currently being written into BOCHS which will convert the x86 code into native bytecode on-the-fly, increasing speed quite a bit.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I run NT4 in vmware on my PII266/128M RAM. It runs about as fast as NT running natively on the machine.

    Yeah, NT works well for me. I have not even tried to use Win9x, but I had planned to until I heard about this. WinNT works very well on my dual PII 333 w/ 128MB RAM.

  • Two VERY important items.

    ONE - Install the drivers that come with VMWARE (svga)
    TWO - Run an X server with the extensions

    If you don't do the above don't expect to see the speed improvements.

    My Celeron 300A w/96MB of ram is working at great speed.

    (Just ordered my copy)

  • 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 :)

  • :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
    Got my second 128M a couple of days ago. Guess why?
  • At that price I'm certainly sold. I have an old copy of Win 95 lying around the house. Once I went to Linux the need to reboot meant it was never worth using Windows anymore but now with VMware I can use Windows if I have to. OK DirectX doesn't work but Quicken and stuff will so Quicken will be getting my money soon too (although I will write to them also saying I want a Linux port as I'd prefer running it natively - but this is the next best thing)

    VMware rocks.

    --

  • NT doesn't have the integrated Internet Explorer. 95 and 98 install it by default.
  • Win98 runs VERY well on my PII-350 with 128MB Ram.
    Installed the display drivers for Win98 but I haven't tried the X server extensions yet.

    Will definetly pay for this. vmware just eliminated the need for me to buy another machine

    -stew
  • ...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.
  • 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.

    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.

  • To everyone who is lauding the $99 price, remember that this is the educational discount. Everyone who pays only $99 had better not be on their high horse about software piracy, unless they never use it for commercial purposes.
  • Beat me to it: Visual Cafe kills NT outright, and to give Bill his due, there are few apps that do that.
  • Its actually in the README-file of the tar-file, where it says that the Mitsumi driver works.
  • 100% agree! If you consider what this software really can do, $75 is not much at all. I for one couldnt be happier, now that I no longer need to reboot my PC to work with all sorts of different operating systems.
  • In my experience, Win NT runs *much* faster than 98 does under vmware, almost as fast as it does natively. 98 just sucks.
  • 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.
  • read it like this:

    if you buy a car with the hood welded,it's going to cost you more when it's time to fix it because the mechanic will have to be mightily creative to fix thing underhood,this will take more time while if the hood can be open,it take less time thus less cash to fix it.

    in the case of software if you need modification to a closed source software,it's going to cost you truckload of cash to get the company to do your custom software while going OpenSource will cost less 'cause you can take the sources and bring them to a freelance coder.
  • 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

  • open source vmware clone project under way (Score:5)

    by freemware ( 50464 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @07:58PM (#1891152)
    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 ?
  • They don't support OS/2, says so in the FAQ.
  • So, Mr. Coward, what part of "Discussion on implementation is underway" didn't you understand? :)

    I bought VMware today, doesn't mean I won't switch if there is an open source alternative, though.

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