Summary: Typical entities promote the same old agenda whereby GNU/Linux is managed by Microsoft and its cost advantage removed by Microsoft

THE Microsoft-associated media is promoting 50-dollar Microsoft patent tax on GNU/Linux by advancing this forgotten variant/derivative of Debian. It's all about Xandros, which GCN claims to be a path to migration that beats existing ones that are free and do not participate in Microsoft's patent racket. From the article:

Past versions of Xandros have always been good. It’s a well-known adaptation of the KDE flavor of Linux that has always concentrated on playing well with Microsoft. Unlike many other versions of Linux in this roundup, Xandros not only operates some Microsoft software, primarily Office, but also plays nice with the Microsoft New Technology File System. Xandros users can now read and write to NTFS drives. Xandros even can authenticate with Microsoft Windows networks. So you can use it as a node on a fully Windows network, and it can share files and printers with other Windows machines.

As readers are probably aware, Techrights has a boycott against Novell and against Xandros. It's about defending -- not about harming -- GNU/Linux.

In other news, Microsoft uses Hyper-V to discriminate against GNU/Linux. Here are some new and very important observations:

Guest operating system support: Microsoft's conflict

[...]

To me, that statement read, "To promote a unified support model between the many applications, OSes and marketing teams within Microsoft, we are imposing artificial limitations on Hyper-V support."

We have seen Microsoft impose such limits this before, as it did in adjusting its virtualization licensing to limit the advanced VMware features that Microsoft's own virtualization products could not support. As soon as Hyper-V could support these features, Microsoft made its licensing models more friendly. Windows has been restricted to promote Hyper-V, and now Hyper-V has been restricted to promote newer Microsoft OSes.

Let's not forget Microsoft's virtualisation tricks near the BIOS (this led to antitrust concerns before Microsoft retreated). Here is some context:

This beta supports Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4, on all versions of Hyper-V. The beta can be downloaded from connect.microsoft.com.

Microsoft went as far as violating the GPL [1, 2, 3]. Planted by Novell in Linux, the code soon became the centre of a PR campaign from Microsoft. But that's just history. Darryl K. Taft, an occasional/habitual Microsoft apologist from Ziff Davis, writes about this latest "update" only to receive hostile responses from Linux Today readers. Jose_X writes:

Microsoft want's people to run Linux on top of Windows so that their software retains control of Linux and retains top performance rather than have to deal with customers doing the reverse.

While it is true that Greg K-H, who has done most of the fixing, is getting money from Microsoft indirectly through Novell, perhaps he does expect at least a little help from Microsoft proper: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Kroah-Ha rtman-Remove-Hyper-V-Driver-from-Kernel

Of course, true to form, Microsoft trumpets that "the community" has received their code well because "the community" has submitted many patches to help fix the code.

Art Cancro writes:

Seriously, is there anyone left in the world who still trusts Microsoft? I can't imagine any data center manager in his right mind would want to virtualize Linux on top of Windows. (And anyone who's serious about virtualization is running bare metal hypervisors such as VMware ESX anyway.)

The only people I could see using this are small-time Windows fanboys who have to grudgingly deploy some sort of Linux application that they need - either because it only runs on Linux or because it's delivered as a virtual appliance.

oldvaxman writes:

Yes any *SERIOUS* admin is running *BARE METAL* hypervisors. MS just wants control if it isn't dependable running on plain servers why would I want it controlling VM's? just the opposite would be the beneficial way .... GNU/Linux controlling MS VM's at least I know that "my base" will be solid

Right after the Novell/Microsoft deal had been signed, Novell's CEO stressed that they agreed to have SLES run under Windows. It was part of the deal. ⬆