VMware: Windows is toast
If you want to know which side of the Linux versus Windows world VMware is on, just ask Paul Harapin, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at VMware, who has sounded the death knell for Windows. His take? That virtual machines will shortly make Windows obsolete:
What that means is they don't need you to buy a large commercial operating system from Microsoft or anybody else....A product we have, Fusion, allows you to run all of your Windows or open source software on your Macintosh as if it was built for the Mac and you can't tell any difference in the way it runs.
We see that as the first step to seeing hypervisor-based desktop hardware where you buy your hardware and you buy your applications which just happen to be virtual appliances....
The operating system becomes just a very thin [Linux-based] layer necessary to run and optimise the application and it's the hypervisor layer that actually runs the underlying infrastructure all the interactions. Generally, organizations will take a Linux base and they'll cut it to see what they want. Then they'll bundle and build an appliance and ship that out.
Steven J. Vaughan Nichols thinks this is a strong hint at VMware's future as an appliance vendor, and not merely as a virtualization company. VMware needs to do this as open-source virtualization technologies cut into its business.
Regardless, it makes for a highly interesting operating system market - both desktop and server - for the decade to come.
Discovered through Linux Today. Thanks, Brian!
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Thinstall, a product recently purchased by VMware, virtualizes just above the OS level, virtualizing the file system and registry to create apps which are "installable" on many machines without conflicting with other files and registry entries of the same names. This is likely the start of a long road towards their ultimate goal of applications running on a truely virtual appliance.
I agree the article could use more details that explain this more. But a little research on your own goes a long way.
BTW, Microsoft also has plans to explore application virtualization.
Death of windows? Yeah, right...
Your anti-microsoft bias makes you look like such a complete and total tool! Find a real job and add some real value to the world, instead of regurgitating bravado, hyperbole, and half-baked conclusions from clueless marketing putzes.
I have no idea why you are linked on C-Net.
- by edivaldoapereira August 1, 2008 9:55 AM PDT
- Saying that "any program built on the windows APIs still need windows to operate" and "you still need to by Windows" just shows you don't know a lot of things, like anyone with strong microsoft bias... I run EVERY windows application I need on Wine, and I know there are other, perhaps better, solutions; moreover, I've already switched a lot of Windows applications I had to use in the past to Linux native and free applications (MS Office and development tools, never more!); some o them are not yet that good, my they fit my needs. The point is, I'm almost "Microsoft free".
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