VMware Predicts Death To Operating Systems

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Mendel Rosenblum envisions a world run by virtualization appliances where software makers wouldn't need a bulky or complex OS.
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
August 9, 2007 04:01 PM

In the view of Mendel Rosenblum, chief scientist and co-founder of virtualization vendor VMware, today's modern operating system is destined for the dustbin, a scenario unlikely to please Microsoft or any of the Linux vendors.
Rosenblum's keynote on Thursday wrapped up the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, preaching the virtues of virtualization, which he believes will eventually make today's complex, some would say bloated, operating systems obsolete. "It's just going to go away," Rosenblum said.... Front Page

[Daniel ~]

I found this to be of interest...
"On the hardware side, Dell Chief Technology Officer Kevin Kettler said Tuesday at LinuxWorld that the computer maker was experimenting with a hypervisor that would ship with its servers in order to provide customers with a high-performing virtualization environment out of the box."

[Gizmo]

Big deal.

Virtualization and hypervisors are good things for operations that can take advantage of the hardware capabilities to consolidate their server farms, but the operating system is 'just going to go away'?

This guy is smoking crack.

First he says that we aren't going to need operating systems, then he talks about using a customized Linux. Uh, isn't Linux an OS?

Anyway, his central point is that vendors will be able to ship an integrated application and operating environment that is customized for the application, and the customer will be able to run that on a server in a virtualized session. Guess what?

I can do that TODAY! Microsoft ships Windows Embedded, which I can strip down and customize to work as and how I want it. There are numerous Linux distros out there that you can do the same thing with.

The problem is that when you customize the OS like that, you take ownership of it. Any problems that you encounter, whether they are because of your customized configuration or not, are yours to deal with; if you want the support of the original OS vendor, prepare to fork over some cash for help. That's why very very few organizations do it.

[Daniel ~]

Like when they forever captured the essence of programmers in Jurassic Park? ":O}