Practical Technology

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February 12, 2007
by sjvn01
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Intel, Novell deliver virtual Windows drivers to Linux

Although Microsoft and Novell are collaborating on virtualization to enable Windows Server to run on SUSE Linux, and vice-versa, Novell and Intel have advanced toward that goal with the release of paravirtualized network and block device drivers that allow Windows Server to run unmodified in Xen virtual environments.

These device drivers support SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES), and work on Intel-based server platforms featuring chipsets using Intel-VT (Virtualization Technology). The new drivers will let customers migrate to newer and fewer energy-efficient servers, consolidating legacy Windows or Linux solutions onto virtual servers.

The two companies have been working on Xen VT drivers since this summer. The first release of a VT driver for SLES was in September.

The new Linux kernel, 2.6.20, also supports Intel-VT and AMD-V (aka Pacifica) virtualization technology. Instead of Xen, however, the new kernel comes with the newer KVM (Kernel-based virtual machine for Linux).

In addition to providing cost savings when virtualizing Windows on SLES, Novell and Intel claim that these new drivers can improve the availability of Windows- and Linux-based workloads via clustered virtual systems, and help IT staff respond faster to business needs by easily creating and provisioning services on virtual systems.

“With our SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform launch in July 2006, Novell became the first major Linux distributor to integrate Xen virtualization into a Linux distribution,” said Jeff Jaffe, Novell executive VP and CTO in a statement. “In September, we became the first distribution to support virtualized Linux workloads on Xen, and today we are the first distributor to support virtualized Windows workloads on Linux.”

“Intel has been working with the open source community to enable Linux virtualization solutions to take advantage of Intel Virtualization Technology, so that guest OS and applications can run unmodified,” added Doug Fisher, Intel’s VP of software and solutions group.

“In addition, our Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor-based platform with its outstanding performance, energy efficiency and reliability provides unparalleled headroom for multiple Virtual Machines running varied data center workloads,” Fisher added. “Getting Windows to run with Linux unmodified and vice versa will bring an immense confidence boost to IT managers in making decisions on corporate platform standardization and refresh.”

Novell is sponsoring a virtualization pilot program for customers, providing enterprise-level support for running fully virtualized Windows 2000/2003/XP workloads on SLES. The paravirtualized device drivers are now available to members of the pilot program. General availability is scheduled for later this year.

For more information on the pilot program and Novell virtualization solutions, visit Novell’s virtualization site. For more details about Intel-VT, visit Intel’s VT site.

A version of this story first appeared in Linux-Watch.

February 10, 2007
by sjvn01
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Vista’s Multimedia Mess

Now, as those of you who follow my adventures in such sites as Linux-Watch and DesktopLinux know, I’m no fan of Windows in general. That said, I actually have had some success with Windows Media Center 2003 and 2005. As a result, I’ve used this operating system both to watch video on my PC and to my Sony HDTV via first a D-Link MediaLounge DSM-320 Wireless Media Player and now a D-Link DSM-520 MediaLounge Wireless HD Media Player Since then, I’ve also used Windows Media Player 11 for XP with good results.

So, when I started doing some serious testing work with Vista Ultimate, I assumed it work at least as well. I was so wrong.

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February 8, 2007
by sjvn01
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Linspire, Canonical, Freespire, Ubuntu join forces

Canonical Ltd., the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Linspire Inc., the developer of Linspire and Freespire, on February 8 announced a technology partnership to integrate with each other’s Linux distributions. Linspire/Freespire will be based on Ubuntu, rather than Debian, and Ubuntu will integrate with Linspire’s CNR package installer/updater.

Starting with Ubuntu’s 7.04 release in April, Ubuntu users will gain access to Linspire’s newly opened CNR (Click and Run) e-commerce and software delivery system. For Linspire, that will mean moving from Debian to Ubuntu as the base for its Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems.

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February 7, 2007
by sjvn01
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Linux hackers tackle WiFi hassles

When it comes to troublesome Linux peripherals, WiFi takes the cake. Sparked by the Portland Project’s efforts to bring standardization to the Linux desktop, the Linux wireless developer community tackled this problem at its second Linux Wireless Summit last month in London.

The Summit was scheduled as a followup to the January IEEE 802 standards committee meeting, which, among other issues, moved a step closer to making 802.11n a real IEEE standard. As a result of this timing, participants at the Linux WiFi meeting included kernel developers and vendor representatives from Intel, Broadcom, Devicescape, MontaVista, and Nokia.

Once there, according to Stephen Hemminger, Linux Wireless Summit co-coordinator and a Linux software developer at the Linux Foundation, the attendees had a very productive meeting.

Still, it’s been slow going in some critical areas of Linux and WiFi, according to John Linville, the Linux wireless software maintainer. In particular, Linville reported that development work is proceeding too slowly on a new 802.11 stack (d80211); and with a new WiFi API (cfg80211), “development is even slower.” Hemminger described the cfg80211 as “a good start but there are no user interface tools (the iproute2 equivalent of iwconfig).”

As for d80211, a breakout session addressed its technical issues. Hemminger wrote in his report on the summit that most of its problems “are not specific to the d80211 stack but have existed all along in Linux wireless. The problem is that up to now each device was doing its own different implementation. The d80211 stack currently exposes a ‘master’ interface which is only used for reconfiguring the internal queuing disciplines. Since the master interface shows up as a device, it can be a potential point of bugs or user confusion so there was discussion on ways to get rid of it prior to acceptance in the main kernel.”

There was also a discussion of the d80211 stack’s more advanced features that are seeing little use as of yet. In particular, Nokia was interested in QoS (Quality of Service) and WMM (WiFi Multimedia) support, because their existing device uses a proprietary userspace library.

As it is, “D80211 supports WMM based on the IP type of service (TOS) value in the socket API,” Hemminger added. This led to a discussion of whether or not existing glibc header files include the right values for WMM/TOS. It was noted that many existing multimedia applications, like Ekiga, Skype, and Google Talk, are not properly setting TOS.

Another breakout session dealt with regulatory concerns. This discussion led the group into facing the dilemma of proprietary hardware and firmware. According to Hemminger, “Hardware vendors license their equipment under FCC section 15 regulations, even though technically pure software devices could be under SDR (Software Defined Radio) regulations. FCC wants all devices to have a ‘no trespassing’ sign on radio settings but there is no consensus on what that means.”

As a result, “the only solution that can get certified in the current regulatory environment is to have a closed source component either in firmware (good), kernel (bad) or userspace (less evil),” Hemminger continued. The reverse-engineered drivers don’t have this problem, but the developers were concerned about the legal implications of redistributing them. “There is some concern since FCC has already stopped hackers who modify power levels on access points. Vendors are reluctant to address the SDR issues too directly because of the regulatory impact to existing non-Linux products if there was any problem.”

The reason why the FCC takes this position is that the governmental agency doesn’t want it to be easy for users to tamper with radio settings or power levels. Thus, the only WiFi solution that can be certified must have a closed source component. Thus, as distasteful as it is to some free software distributors, legal support for WiFi on Linux will often have to incorporate proprietary elements in one way or another.

Coming out of the meeting, the developers committed to make experimental wireless tarball (and driver) packages available; move faster on the new cfg80211 API; and gain a more complete understanding of the regulatory WiFi situation.

The next Linux Wireless Summit will be this fall, most likely in October, on either the U.S. East Coast or in Israel.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

February 7, 2007
by sjvn01
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Linspire sheds light on new “wiki-ized” CNR

Several weeks ago, desktop Linux distributor Linspire Inc. announced that it was going to open up CNR (Click N Run), its Web-based software downloader/manager, to other distributions. Now, the company is revealing more about what this new Linux software distribution system will look like.

First, in a letter to Linspire customers, Kevin Carmony, Linspire’s CEO and president, wrote, “Because the new CNR.com system was designed from the beginning with the intention of supporting multiple distributions (both Debian and RPM), most of the work for supporting a new distribution will already be done. The vast majority of the work is in building the overall system and has nothing to do with a specific distribution. This means that with just the small additional effort specific to a new distribution, we can leverage 100% of the CNR system.”

Thus, once the universal CNR is in place, we can expect to see new distribution support rolled out quickly. Why would Linspire, which supports both its own self-named distribution and the community-based Freespire, support other desktop Linux distributions?

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February 6, 2007
by sjvn01
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Weather alert: new Microsoft FUD storm expected

In recent weeks, Microsoft seems to have gone out of its way to put Linux down, while boosting Linux. First, there was the bribetop scandal; then, the Wikipedia ‘correction’ affair. Now, the company is up to one of its oldest tricks: playing games with analyst reports.

This time around, Sunbelt Software is working with the Yankee Group, a research company with a poor reputation in Linux circles, to produce its “yearly major survey comparing Windows to Linux.” Here we go again.

What’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. Sunbelt is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. In other words, they’re buddies with Microsoft. If anyone does say much bad about Windows, how many people do you think will see those results? I suspect they’ll end up going straight in the great bit-bucket in the sky.

Next, they’re only looking for people to survey who read the Sunbelt publication, WServerNews. This is a publication that claims to be “the world’s largest newsletter focused on system admin issues for Windows NT4/2000/2003.” Funny, I don’t see the word “Linux” in there. Do you?

What do you think? Do you think people who read a publication devoted to Windows servers are going to have anything nice to say about Linux? If you do, I have a wonderful old bridge, lightly-used, in Brooklyn, that I’ll be willing to sell you at a remarkably good price.

Now, if Microsoft was just doing this “research” for its own benefit I wouldn’t have any problem with that. After-all, over at DesktopLinux.com, we do surveys, like our 2006 state of the Linux desktop. The difference is, we don’t pretend that the opinion of a group of largely Linux desktop users says a whole lot about the entire desktop universe.

The Yankee Group, however, proclaimed a couple of years ago that its independent study showed that Windows TCO (total cost of ownership) was better than Linux’s TCO. It was only later found out by Pamela Jones of Groklaw that Sunbelt was behind this “independent” study.

Anyone want to bet that when the press release goes out about this new survey’s results it won’t mention anything about it being done by a Microsoft partner with a group of self-selected Windows administrators? And, once it’s out, we can be certain that Microsoft will trumpet how much better Windows is than Linux on its Get the Facts website.

After all, as Mary Jo Foley points out in her All About Microsoft blog, recent court documents in the Iowa consumer antitrust case against Microsoft, Comes v. Microsoft Corp., show that as recently as 2002, Microsoft tried to force IDC analysts into tweaking their December 2002 study to put Microsoft in a better light. IDC wouldn’t go along.

You know, Microsoft, I have an idea. If Windows and Vista and all that are really better than Linux and the alternatives, why keep playing games with the facts? Why bribe bloggers? Why pay people to set the record straight? Why promote biased surveys?

Could it be that Microsoft, with its hundreds of millions of customers, with its billions of dollars of quarterly income, is running scared that people will start waking up one day to the fact that there are better and cheaper alternatives? Can you think of another reason? If so, I’d love to hear it.

— Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Yankee Group responds!

Following the publication of this column, the Yankee Group sent us a rebuttal. In an effort to allow our readers to hear both sides of the story and form their own judgments, we have reproduced the response from Yankee Group research fellow Laura Didio here.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.