09.11.08

Links 11/09/2008: CERN Does GNU/Linux, KVM Will Be Free

Posted in News Roundup at 5:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Laptops

$98 Linux laptop makes Netbooks look pricey
Netbooks, Chrome and the future of computing
A Tiny Laptop With a Difference: No Hard Drive
Acer Perspire One

Enough about me, let’s get back to the sweaty business in hand. Of course, I decided that the installed Linpus Lite linux (based on the venerable Fedora), which works perfectly adequately, had to be ripped out and replaced with Ubuntu. It has become an obsession of mine, to install Ubuntu linux on everything. The fridge runs Ubuntu now, as does the PC and the mobile phone, and I’m considering an implant for the dog.
Finding Linux Systems Where They Never Were Found Before

I regularly receive a catalog from Tiger Direct in the mail Up until very recently every system, desktop and laptop, in their catalog ran Windows and sported a Windows logo in the ad. While the majority still do a half a dozen laptops, all low-end netbooks, are sold with Linux preinstalled and the Tux logo is prominently featured in some of the ads. Linux netbooks by Sylvania, Asus, HP, and Acer are all prominently advertised alongside Windows systems. Searching for Linux on their website reveals additional models available preloaded with Linux.

GNU/Linux

How Linux is keeping Microsoft honest (and why SBS sucks)
Large Hadron Collider – powered by Linux
Red Hat: The hypervisor will be free
Red Hat sprints past ESX on VM running
Ubuntu Saves Compaq Presario 2100 From Death and Windows
The Market Loves Linux (That’s Why It’s Thriving)

My wife often rolls her eyes at me, because once I find a new hobby I latch onto it as though life depended on it. The more arbitrary the nature of the hobby, the less she’s impressed with it. So imagine her immense delight when, a year ago, the only thing I would talk about with her was Linux.
Quick Rebuttal of the « List of 40 Reasons
Windows Guy Tries Linux Mint: Part 2 Of Our Distro For Windows Converts Review Series

There are lots of other things to discover in Mint, but in the end, I think I agree with many of the commentators. For a new person wanting to move away from the proprietary world of Windows or Mac, Mint is a good starting point. It just worked.
Mombuntu – Ubuntu For Your Mom!

Desktop Environments

Faster application launching with GNOME-Do and GNOME Deskbar
Grumpy Gnome-Hater Almost Changes Mind
Akademy 2008 was Amazing

It has been a couple of weeks since Akademy 2008 finished. KDE’s contributors are now back home, more enthusiastic than ever about our future. If you missed the talks videos are now online. This article covers what happened during the week and outlines some of the results. Read on for more.

F/OSS

Browsers

Leftovers

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Michael Robertson, Chairman of Linspire, Inc. 07 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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11 Comments

AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 1:23 pm

KVM “will be” free? “Is free” and “will continue to be free”, surely….
Roy Schestowitz said,

September 11, 2008 at 1:37 pm

Yes, see the headline: “Red Hat: The hypervisor will be free”
AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Which isn’t a reference to KVM alone; I’m wondering why you changed that?
Roy Schestowitz said,

September 11, 2008 at 1:59 pm

No reason. I knew it was already free and I hope companies will embrace KVM and not those binary things (Xen is dead in my eyes and Sun promote Solaris with xVM).
AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Xen’s not dead for those who need performance; it will continue to be an option for a while yet.
Roy Schestowitz said,

September 11, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Xen is a mess not only because of its new owner and the Microsoft connection. It’s a technical mess worthy of the bin bucket from what I can gather.

The truth about KVM and Xen

When the distros first shipped Xen, it was done mostly out of desperation. Virtualization was, and still is, the “hot” thing. Linux did not provide any native hypervisor capability. Most Linux developers didn’t even really know that much about virtualization. Xen was a pretty easy to use purpose-built kernel that had a pretty good community. So we made the hasty decision to ship Xen instead of investing in making Linux a proper hypervisor.

This decision has come back to haunt us now in the form of massive confusion. When people talk about Xen not being merged into Linux, I don’t think they realize that Xen will never be merged into Linux. Xen will always be a separate, purpose-built kernel. There are patches to Linux that enable it to run well as a guest under Xen. These patches are likely to be merged in the future, but Xen will never been a part of the Linux kernel.

[...]

Looking at the rest of the industry, I’m surprised that other kernels haven’t gone in the direction of Linux in terms of adding hypervisor support directly to the kernel.

Why is Windows not good enough to act a hypervisor such that Microsoft had to write a new kernel from scratch (Hyper-V)?

Why is Solaris not good enough to act as a hypervisor requiring Sun to ship Xen in xVM? Solaris is good enough to run enterprise workloads but not good enough to run a Windows VM? Really? Maybe

Forget about all of the “true hypervisor” FUD you may read. The real question to ask yourself is what is so wrong with these other kernels that they aren’t capable of running virtual machines well and instead have to rely on a relatively young and untested microkernel to do their heavy lifting?

KVM and Xen cofounders engage in war of words

Maybe, but Pratt was responding to his KVM?s competitors? claims that Xen’s days are numbered because of KVM?s tight integration with the Linux kernel.

Increasing Virtualization Insanity

For sysadmin types this means: do what you have to do with Xen for now. But keep the investments small. For developers this means: don’t let yourself be tied to a platform. Use an abstraction layer such as libvirt to bridge over the differences. For architects this means: don’t looking to Xen for answers, base your new designs on KVM.

Xen vs. KVM: round 1 bell to ring soon

Industry executives are downplaying concerns about a growing schism between rival open source virtualization factions but a market battle between Xen and KVM appears increasingly likely, and imminent.

Linux: KVM Adds Support For SMP Guests

A recently merged KVM patchset included support for guest SMP, various performance improvements, and suspend/resume fixes. KVM stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine,

Linux: Improved KVM Performance, Vista Support

Avi Kivity announced significant performance improvements and support for running 32-bit Windows Vista as a guest within the latest release of KVM.

Linux KVM Virtualization Performance

The benefits of KVM are high performance, stable, no modifications of the guest operating system are necessary, and a great deal of other capabilities (e.g. using the Linux scheduler). Once the Linux 2.6.20 kernel is officially out the door we will proceed with a greater number of KVM benchmarks in various environments including looking at the hardware virtualization performance between AMD and Intel.
AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 3:02 pm

None of that is particularly true as far as I can tell.

KVM is in the mainline kernel because it’s a simple solution given the hardware support. Xen exists to provide support where hardware isn’t available. They’re different solutions for different jobs, and KVM is still quite immature.
Roy Schestowitz said,

September 11, 2008 at 3:22 pm

That point I agree with you on, based on what I’ve been reading. VMware seems like the leader, but it has the bundling dilemma.
AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 3:28 pm

VMware is the leader, that’s true, but it’s not about the actual hypervisor – what they lead in is the tools and drivers for managing large number of machines.

In terms of free software competitors, it’s actually something like oVirt which is the competitor: and in that sense, it doesn’t matter if it’s KVM, Xen, or some other system – with a single virtualisation API you don’t really “care” any more because they all look the same. You just pick the appropriate one for your hardware and/or software and/or other needs.
Roy Schestowitz said,

September 11, 2008 at 3:31 pm

I only have experience with desktop hypervisors.

I’m starting to see others who frown upon Microsoft+Novell:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10039172-62.html

“As Suse Linux fades further from any relevance outside of Microsoft, and Red Hat and Sun make huge strides in virtualization, Novell plans to offer support for Suse running on Windows. Is there meaning here or is Novell just becoming more of a Microsoft puppet?”
AlexH said,

September 11, 2008 at 3:45 pm

Interesting that he calls him column “negative approach”

Look, it’s quite easy to pooh-pooh them trying to improve the performance of their OS on Windows’ virtualisation. At the end of the day, if there aren’t people who want the product, they won’t make much out of it, and if there are people who want it I don’t see what the harm is. If people want to run Windows to virtualise servers, if the free software performance sucks they’re just going to run more Windows.