- Latest News
- Comment & Metrics
- Magazine Articles
- Jason Stamper's Blog
- Open Source Blog
- Newsletter Sign-Up
- Jason Stamper's blog
- Open sources by Dave Rosenberg & Matt Asay
- Dana Blankenhorn's open source blog
- Stephe Walli's Once More Unto the Breach
- IBM's Bob Sutor
- Sun's Simon Phipps
- Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk
- Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog
- Zack Urlocker's The Open Force
- Linux-Watch
- Glyn Moody's open...
- Mark Hinkle's EncoreOpus
- Raven Zachery’s CAOS Theory
- Kaj Arno’s blog
- Open Source Unleashed
- Open source integration on demand, anyone?
- Is iPhone 3G ready for the enterprise?
- IBM readies Requirements Composer for Jazz
- Open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint, anyone?
- The 10 Best Open Source Rules Engines
- Open source Amazon mashup integration, with a bit of cloud computing for good measure
- Is Windows for cheapskates, and do Macs rule the US?
- Barracuda suit 'not about open source': Trend Micro
- VMware makes Linux fan new CEO
- Reasons to choose Linux # 113
- Iona bought by Progress Software
- Stoking the open source rumour mill
- Open source solution to ‘dirty data’ problem?
- Open source solves UK cancer charity challenges
- Iona slaps Apache on the back
- Sourcefire finds new CEO at Citrix
- Intalio open source BPM User Con this week
- Sourcefire readies Snort 3, comments on Barracuda offer
- 18 months into the job, Red Hat’s CEO…
- The 10 Best Linus Torvalds Quotes
- Oracle and Linux
- CodeGear adamant it will keep the faith
- Novell "gaining momentum" thanks to Linux?
- Nuxeo claims it’s flying in open source ECM
- 100 most influential tech vendors: you have to be kidding
- Virtualisation CEO says virtualisation is becoming commodity
- Could your next mortgage be from Microsoft or BT?
- SnapLogic claims really simple (open source) integration
- OOOOOF! A sucker punch to Microsoft’s Windows biz?
- MySQL CEO: it's tough for private open source firms
Open Source Weblog
Microsoft supports Linux with free Virtual Server
April 04, 2006
Yes, you read that right, the big news from the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Monday came from Microsoft, with its announcement that Release 2 of Virtual Server 2005 product is now available as a free download and that it will be providing technical support for Linux running as a guest on the software.
The ability to run Linux on Virtual Server 2005 is no surprise. In April 2005 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Virtual Server Service Pack 1 during his speech at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas.
"As much as that hurts my eyes, I know that's an important capability for the Virtual Server technology for our customers," he joked. "We know folks are going to want to run Windows systems, and Linux systems, and other systems together on top of our Virtual Server and Windows. You'll see support for that later in the year."
While Ballmer's timing might have been off (Service Pack 1, which will add support for AMD and Intel hardware virtualisation capabilities, was recently delayed until 2007 following the delays to Windows Vista and Office 2007, and will now be a service pack to the freely-available Release 2) the ability to run Linux on Virtual Server is now available, and what's more, Microsoft will provide the technical support to help you do it.
That is a significant announcement, and one that will be enabled via virtual machine add-ins that can be installed with Linux guests on Virtual Server to improve guest and host synchronization, mouse and display driver functionality, and SCSI disk emulation.
The add-ins also enable Microsoft to offer 24-technical support for select Linux distributions running as a guest. While some might see this as a limitation, the list includes no fewer than nine distributions:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 6)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (update 6)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
- Red Hat Linux 7.3
- Red Hat Linux 9.0
- Novell SUSE Linux 9.2
- Novell SUSE Linux 9.3
- Novell SUSE Linux 10.0
The company also promised that customers who report problems with Linux guests or virtual machine add-ins will be routed to a team specially trained to deal with Linux virtualisation on Virtual Server 2005 and that the product support model will be "consistent" with existing Virtual Server support.
Comments
back to top