Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 19, 2009
by sjvn01
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Take Windows 7 for a spin with VirtualBox

Everyone likes to try new and shiny technology toys like the Windows 7 beta, but when the price is having to replace your existing operating system, that’s too much for most people. That’s when being able to use a virtualization program can come in darn handy.

To test out how well Windows 7 works on a virtualized system, I decided to use Sun’s VirtualBox software. While there are, of course, other virtualization programs out there, such as VMware’s Workstation and Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox has two significant advantages over the others. First, it’s free. Second, you can use it as a host for other operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris.

In my case, I decided to use VirtualBox to run Windows 7 on two Dell Inspiron 530S systems, one running Windows XP Pro SP3 and the other running MEPIS 7 Linux. Each PC came with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an Integrated Intel 3100 Graphics Media Accelerator. While not powerful systems, these proved to have more than enough CPU power to run both their native operating system and Windows 7.

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February 18, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Citrix, Microsoft, and Red Hat or Novell gang up on VMware

Citrix is about to put a world of hurt on its virtualization rival, VMware. Next week, Citrix will be announcing that it will no longer charge for its flagship virtualization program XenServer 5, and its new management program, Citrix Essentials, will support both Microsoft’s Hyper-V and XenServer.

This looks like a smart move to me. Virtualization, even high-end virtualization like XenServer is fast becoming a commodity. Off the top of my head, I can list four different virtualization programs that are open source: Sun’s VirtualBox; Citrix’s Xen; Linux’s built-in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine); and Parallels’ OpenVZ. Heck, even VMware, which has no love for open source, was forced to release its desktop virtualization program, VMware View Open Client, as open source.

In addition, even more companies are jumping into virtualization. Networking giants Cisco and Juniper are slowly moving into network virtualization and servers may not be far behind.

With a market like this you have to do something different to try to stand out. What Citrix will be doing is giving away its high-end virtualization program in an attempt to grab market share while betting that its virtualization management programs will make the money.

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February 18, 2009
by sjvn01
15 Comments

Citrix to offer free XenServer virtualization

In a shot across VMware’s bows, Citrix will announce next week that it will be offering free licenses to its full XenServer virtualization program and new partnering with Microsoft to provide system management, Citrix Essentials, for Hyper-V and, in return, Microsoft’s System Center will support XenServer
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The virtualization wars are heating up. According to sources, Citrix Systems, the Xen virtualization company and long-time Microsoft partner, will announce on February 23rd that it will no longer charge for its flagship program, XenServer.

Citrix will not, however be open-sourcing XenServer. While Xen, the hypervisor itself, is open source, XenServer, according to Citrix, contains proprietary code that makes it much easier to setup and maintain and is a much more polished and reliable virtualization platform. In the past, XenServer 5 pricing started at a suggested retail price of $900 per server, regardless of how many CPUs or sockets were on the system. Starting soon, XenServer 5 won’t cost users a penny.

So how does Citrix plan to make money? By offering a new Citrix virtualization management product line that adds advanced virtualization management capabilities to both XenServer and Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology.

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February 18, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

How Many Linux Users Are There (Really)?

How many Linux users are there really?

It’s a darn good question, and there isn’t a darn good answer.

In one way, we’re all Linux users now.

As Jim Zemlin, the executive director of The Linux Foundation, points out, “I am not joking or trying to be trite, but the answer to this question is: every single person in the modern world every day. Everyone who searches Google, picks up a phone and uses telecommunication infrastructure, watches a new televisions, use a new camera, makes a call on many modern cell phones, trades a stock on a major exchange, watches a weather forecast generated on a supercomputer, logs into Facebook, navigates via air traffic control systems, buys a netbook computer, checks out at a cash register, withdraws cash at an ATM machine, fires up a quick-boot desktop (even those with Windows), or uses one of many medical devices; the list goes on and on.”

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February 17, 2009
by sjvn01
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Debian 5’s Five Best Features

Despite delays and internal arguments, Debian 5, Lenny, has finally arrived, and it’s a darn nice Linux distribution.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Consider what Warren Woodford, the well-regarded Linux developer, who uses Debian for the foundation of his SimplyMEPIS Linux distribution. Woodford, who switched MEPIS’ cornerstone distribution from Ubuntu to Debian in 2007, said, “Behind the scenes, MEPIS is being used more and more in demanding environments, so I was happy the Debian teams decided to use the hardening features in gcc to increase the security of Debian in Lenny.

Woodford added, “I know a lot of our users were happy that Debian decided to continue supporting KDE 3.5. They like what they have and don’t want to be forced to learn the KDE 4 look and feel.”

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February 16, 2009
by sjvn01
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Red Hat & Microsoft partner up!

In what came as a surprise to many Linux observers, Red Hat announced on the morning of February 16th that it has signed reciprocal agreements with Microsoft to enable increased interoperability for the companies’ virtualization platforms.

While Red Hat, after Novell partnered with Microsoft, had talked with Microsoft in 2007 about partnering, those talks came to nothing since Red Hat would not have anything to do with Microsoft’s various IP (intellectual property) claims.

Things have changed. Red Hat announced that each company will join the other’s virtualization validation/certification program and will provide coordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers. The object according to Red Hat’s press statement is: “The reciprocal validations will allow customers to deploy heterogeneous, virtualized Red Hat and Microsoft solutions with confidence.”

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