OS News Archive

Linux Heavies Plan Lightweight Virtualization

OS News 7 Comments
Red Hat and Novell, the two top Linux sellers, have only just begun building Xen virtualization software into their products. But they're already planning to add a higher-level option. Xen is a 'hypervisor' that lets a single computer run several operating systems simultaneously, using an idea called 'virtualization'. This enables companies to use a single server more efficiently - something that could save them money. Now 'containers', a higher-level virtualization approach that makes a single operating system look like many, is also getting traction.
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Hardware Virtualization Slower Than Software?

OS News 28 Comments
" a new white paper by VMWare that comes to the surprising conclusion that hardware-assisted x86 virtualization oftentimes fails to outperform software-assisted virtualization. My reading of the paper says that this counterintuitive result is often due to the fact that hardware-assisted virtualization relies on expensive traps to catch privileged instructions while software-assisted virtualization uses inexpensive software substitutions." Read more at Slashdot.
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Yet Another Way to Browse OSNews

OS News 20 Comments
Between the full desktop version, the subscriber's ad-free version, the normal mobile version (via autodetection), the very lite mobile version and the WAP version of OSNews, here is one more: http://osnews.com/pda . This version is built around our RSS feed and it's geared towards cellphones (like the Motorola RaZR line) that can't quite manage to render our normal mobile front page (28 KB overall) while the very lite or WAP versions don't have enough information in them so they leave our readers with a bitter taste. Hence, we implemented this RSS-based middle-ground mobile version, like we also did for other popular sites yesterday (screenshots). The PHP source code that generates this mobile-friendly layout is freely available and ready to be deployed, courtecy of MoBits.com.
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What Does Your OS Require of You?

  Submitted by OSer OS News 43 Comments
"All of you who are reading this article right now are doing so with the help of an operating system. Of course, if you're reading it on paper, then that you may not think that that's the case, although it had to be printed by a printer that was connected to a computer which was operated by an operating system, right? In a way, it's like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. When you get right down to it, operating systems are a major part of our connected lives since something is needed to manage and execute all of the actions that take place on the electronic devices that we love oh so very much."
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The Ad-Supported Operating System

OS News 50 Comments
In all appearance of an ad-supported operating system is probably not that far off. This article takes a look at some of the finer points behind an OS which is financed with ad views, and more specifically the logic behind a free version of Windows which could make this a reality. There are a few issues which must be resolved first, but with Microsoft refining Windows Live and shifting some of their focus to advertising, many of the pieces seem to be falling into place. A few years ago we featured an editorial and poll on the subject here at OSNews.
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Microsoft XenSource Talk About Their Agreement

  Submitted by Alessandro Perilli OS News 2 Comments
"Two weeks ago Microsoft and XenSource announced an agreement to grant interoperability of virtual machines on upcoming Windows Server Virtualization and XenEnterprise virtualization platforms. The move raised the attention of the whole IT world, involving license, support, security, and performance issues. Virtualization.info interviewed both companies to understand the details of the agreement and shed light on what customers can expect from the Microsoft hypervisor release."
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CLI Magic: feh for Image Viewing

OS News 22 Comments
"Too many Linux image viewers are tinged with little annoyances - they take too long to load, are slow to redraw the display, have limited format support, sport inconvenient controls - so when you want to settle on one, inevitably there's something to make you utter feh! in general discontent. Good call - feh is the name of a speedy little viewer that packs a surprising number of features for its size."
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VMware Server 1.0: Why Wouldn’t You Use It?

OS News 26 Comments
Based on functionality alone, VMware's VMware Server 1.0 would merit serious consideration for inclusion in any developer or system administrator's tool kit. However, it's VMware Server's price - free - that propels this product from merely worth having to practically must-have. During tests, eWEEK Labs found VMware Server 1.0, which was released July 12, to be extremely useful for development, testing and deployment of applications - be they stand-alone or part of a complete operating-system-to-application stack.
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Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System

OS News 31 Comments
Plan 9 is an operating system designed by the same people who created the original UNIX. Its development began in the late 1980's and it was a research project intended to address a variety of system scalability issues that the UNIX and LINUX kernels don't do particularly well, namely, distributed computing, distributed name spaces, and distributed file systems. Plan 9 is open source and its current and fourth major release was in 2002. It is available as an install or LiveCD and it can be downloaded here. Note: This is an entry to our Alternative OS Contest.
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OpenVMS – a System of Structure

OS News 68 Comments
In its initial concept, OpenVMS (then VAX/VMS) sought to provide the functionality and capabilities of a mainframe-class system at a small fraction of the size and cost, while at the same time providing higher levels of reliability and integrity. These goals were achieved by what has become OpenVMS' hallmark, an emphasis on integrity and architectural leverage. Note: This is an entry to our OS Contest.
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Microsoft, XenSource To Develop Interoperability for Longhorn

  Submitted by Patrik Buckau OS News 33 Comments
"Microsoft and XenSource today announced they will cooperate on the development of technology to provide interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and the new Microsoft Windows hypervisor technology-based Windows Server virtualization. With the resulting technology, the next version of Windows Server, code-named 'Longhorn', will provide customers with a flexible and powerful virtualization solution across their hardware infrastructure and operating system environments for cost-saving consolidation of Windows, Linux and Xen-enabled Linux distributions."
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Xen Backed by Novell, IBM: Too Far, Too Fast?

  Submitted by gergnz OS News 8 Comments
Lots of news on Xen. Firstly, "This is a document about how to set up XEN and iSCSI on 3 Debian Stable machines so that you can have a virtual host that can be migrated live between 2 of the machines. The third machine will be the common disk for the virtual machine that is seen via the 2 machines running XEN." Secondly, "IBM and Novell are throwing their considerable weight behind Xen, but some experts are suggesting that these companies may be pushing this nascent technology too far too fast." Lastly, "You can now run OpenSolaris domains under Xen as dom0 with OpenSolaris domUs too."
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