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Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux
- yewenjie 6y agoWhat was the status of it so far in Linux?
- jlgaddis 6y agoWell, according to TFA, the patches were submitted as an RFC. Short version: it's not in Linux, this is basically the very first step in getting it into Linux, it's still gonna be probably several months at least before it makes it into the mainline kernel, and then however long after that for it to make it into your distro's kernel. FWIW, I think it was a little over 3 years from the first "RFC" for Wireguard until it was merged into mainline (part of that, though, is because some existing things in the kernel had to be "re-worked" first).
- dvh 6y agoEmbrace. New status is Extend.
- speedgoose 6y agoThat was 25 years ago.
- aunty_helen 6y ago>Windows 10 is on a path to becoming a hybrid Windows/Linux system This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui
- dragonelite 6y agoFrom what i can gather, China is hedging away from windows and onto the Linux based distro UOS(deepin). I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is also making some preparation for that movement so they can still offer software for the Chinese market.
- jmnicolas 6y agoThere's already WSL for your Unix needs. However MS seems to fall back on its old bad habits and the "it-just-works" gui is less true since a while now (I would say a year): we had some major pains after every Windows update at work to the point where the admin blocked them in the firewall. I think their release schedule (twice a year) is way too fast, and they should focus more on stability.
- rubidium 6y agoLTSB for the win. I don’t know why more orgs don’t default to that.
- jmnicolas 6y agoWe're 2 to manage IT tasks in the company (my real qualification is software dev though). We don't have access to Microsoft anything (too expensive) so we use the licenses that comes with the computers we (rarely) buy. I still haven't managed to convert all our workstations from Win 7 to Win 10 (and yes we still have a couple XPs), there are special apps on them that needs the intervention of one of our provider, it's complicated. Last year one of our provider sent us some machines with LTSB 2016 installed. They're already at their EOL. Edge is not available and there's not even an image viewer on this OS, MS Photos is impossible to install (and is crap anyway, it regularly fails to show an image that any other viewer including Paint can open etc). Color me unimpressed.
- morrbo 6y agoThis is awesome. Although hyperv itself has been great for me, there have been certain things which have been a royal pain (copying/unzipping a compressed image, integrating into our monitoring system come to mind) which don't work with the stripped down windows version they have. I do wonder though, will the Linux version be backwards compatible with the Microsoft hyper-v console? Or will there be something similar? It's very nice to be able to fire up a GUI over a vpn and right click add/configure a new machine. Similarly with installing new images. If anyone has any insight into any of this id be really interested to know!
- whereistimbo 6y agoProbably they will port necessary library and console apps to Linux version of PowerShell.
- a_imho 6y agoI know next to nothing about virtualization, are these patches Microsoft specific, or do they benefit others as well?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flatiron 6y agoHyperV host only runs on Windows.
- whereistimbo 6y agoThis patch makes it possible to make Linux as HyperV host, or in Xen terminology, "Dom0"
- AstralStorm 6y agoFor me, the show stopper is lack of device forwarding with WSL and WSL2 (HyperV in general) on non-Server versions. Even the Workstation edition does not support it. It will be less of a problem once DXGI support lands since it's mostly required for AI, DSP and video processing work for me, as they require rather direct access to the GPU.
- bugBunny 6y agoThe only reason I am still using windows is MS office. I might give it a try myself... My home machine is running Arch linux and works flawlessly for more then two years already. Just my work is still stucked with a lot of documentations sharing between some other people and I need MS office programs which have no alternative in open-source word. well, the office.com looks promising these days and I hope to switch completely ASAP.
- rovr138 6y agoYeah, I was going to mention the online versions. If you’re doing simple office stuff, it works great. If you need excel plugins and stuff, then you’ll need a local version.
- kasabali 6y agoWine runs older Office versions fine. I heard Crossover works even better if you're willing to pay for it.
- robbyt 6y agoThis reads like a Slashdot post from 1998.
- duckmysick 6y agoIt even predates Arch Linux by a few years.
- kyuudou 6y agoJust needs a "even my grandmother is using KDE seamlessly with her online banking site"
- whereistimbo 6y agoFor typical business use office.com is really quirky and doesn't work well like the desktop counterpart.
- mongol 6y agoIf we assume this is technically sound and so on, is there a political dimension that will be considered before merging this? Such as "this will decrease Linux marketplace penetration in this-and-this niche"? I know that Linux is not a company etc so a direct comparison is awkward, but there can still be such considerations weighing in, perhaps...?
- rbanffy 6y agoAnyone who's hosting Hyper-V VMs on Windows can now move to Linux and host those VMs under the same Hyper-V environment they were before. I'm not sure how many do this and, frankly, I'm quite surprised Microsoft does it on Azure. Of course, you can run those same VMs under KVM under a Linux OS, so it's not some new capability.
- tmarsden 6y agoHow does enabling software to run on Linux decrease Linux marketplace penetration? If anything it would have the opposite effect as anyone running Hyper-V could now choose to host on Linux.
- wvenable 6y agoThis only increases Linux's marketplace penetration as this allows Linux to be used in situations where previously on Windows could be used. But Linux developers do not care about market penetration -- they simply want to create the best OS kernel. If this makes the kernel better, they will merge it.
- wilt 6y agoI don't see what this will do that kvm can't already do? Seems like a wasted effort.
- arbitrage 6y agoit enables hyper-v on linux. the whole point is that it does something different.
- EdSchouten 6y agoSo what does it do then?
- rbanffy 6y agoI believe the biggest difference is that, unlike KVM, Hyper V causes money to change hands.
- jacquesm 6y agoJust ditch Windows and use Linux directly. That's the fastest way to get Linux to a higher level, not to use crutches.
- JamesSwift 6y agoSorry for the ignorance, but what does this mean? I understand from the article that the patch allows the full Hyper-V stack to run on a linux-based machine (as opposed to previously needing windows to run the root partition). But what does _that_ mean to have the ability to run Hyper-V entirely on linux? Is it just a "good to have options" thing?
- flightllessbird 6y agoIt allows them to run a bare metal (type 1) hypervisor instead of a VM on top of Windows.
- quietbritishjim 6y agoHyper-V already is a bare metal (type 1) hypervisor. Admittedly it does use one (or more) of the guests, called the "parent partition", to handle some of the work for it. This change allows that parent partition to be Linux instead of Windows, but it does not make it any more of a bare metal hypervisor than it was before, unless you know something in addition to what the article says.
- SQueeeeeL 6y agoIt probably means they want to leverage out the existing open source VM software so they can make one with proprietary Windows support (at some point down the line). There is a long history of this in the past with Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Everyone should be afraid of this, even the Microsoft employees commenting here. Look at the 737 MAX post on the front page for another example of management corrupting engineering
- cycloptic 6y ago>Everyone should be afraid Please don't FUD like this. Proprietary systems on top of Linux are nothing new and Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to have done it. If you have some real proof of their business plans then let's hear that rather than encouraging speculation and fearmongering.
- fanatic2pope 6y agoInteresting. Windows is slowly becoming WorkplaceOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS
- robbyt 6y agoPerhaps Microsoft is finally tired of trying to get Azure working on the Windows kernel. Or possibly they need this for ARM VM instances?
- whereistimbo 6y agoPerhaps Hyper-V team is already tired dealing with Windows. I mean look at this quote: "...it takes approximately 16 hours to compile Windows on a 64 cores super fast server-class machine optimized for the job, and with hundreds of GB of memory, and that time does not include running tests." [0] [0] https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-Windows-and-getting-rid-of-the-licensing-code/answer/Axel-Rietschin?share=1 https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-...
- fomine3 6y agoAzure team should use Windows Server Core or similar equivalent for Hypervisor OS that don't need Desktop features. Minimum Windows is not so much huge.
- 50ckpuppet 6y agoembrace, extend, extinguish
- transpute 6y agoIf this reaches production status (e.g. with a new Hyper-V Hardware Qualification List and HHQL logo program like WHQL), it could be the biggest news for Linux since Dell started shipping a laptop with pre-installed Linux. Such a logo program could provide OEMs with a test suite for Hyper-V with Linux hardware drivers, which means Microsoft could start contributing test cases to upstream Linux projects like CKI. Most importantly, a Hyper-V for Linux logo qualification program could require that OEM/ODMs pass HHQL before shipping supported hardware, when they still have engineering resources allocated for system and device firmware fixes. In short, Hyper-V for Linux has the potential for positive ripple effects throughout the supply chain for Linux "secured core" hardware. When combined with WSL2, Direct X paravirtualized graphics for Linux, and Azure Sphere (based on OpenEmbedded/Yocto), it's a major endorsement for Linux and the flexibility of Type-1, CPU-assisted virtualization pioneered by open-source Xen. The Microsoft Linux license for IoT/embedded devices includes support for 10+ years of security updates, which will hopefully extend OEM firmware support timelines for edge hardware, https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/seay/ https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/seay/ > This talk will cover ... device security from the chip to the Linux kernel, user application isolation, network communication, cloud interaction, and what it takes to keep a system secure for 13 years.
- likesftereppl99 6y agoOk, sure. Given Xen is battle tested at scale and k8s/etc for microservices, why bother to learn to manage this?
- transpute 6y ago> why bother to learn to manage this? Even if primarily adopted by existing Microsoft customers familiar with Hyper-V, this would benefit Xen, KVM and any Linux distro running on the same hardware targets. If a theoretical HHQL motivates OEMs to prove that Linux drivers work in a Hyper-V root partition on new hardware, with driver fixes upstreamed to the Linux mainline kernel, then everyone wins. There is also ongoing work for nested virtualization, to enable KVM, Xen or Hyper-V to be a bare-metal (L0) or a nested (L1) hypervisor, e.g. in a cloud environment where the bare-metal hypervisor cannot be changed by customers. These interoperability improvements increase hardware support for hypervisors, which can then compete at multiple architectural layers. Users can choose based on optimization of the HL0-HL1-VM-App stack which works best for their specific workload.
- charwalker 6y agoMy reading is this allows HyperV Server (standalone, free) to be Linux based. But I could me misunderstanding this as the ability to run HyperV on Linux baremetal much like Windows 10 with HyperV installed or Windows Server with HyperV role. As a Windows guy, I can appreciate this. HyperV Server is already free, though requires some care and feeding if set up off a domain.
- desktopninja 6y ago>Windows 10 is on a path to becoming a hybrid Windows/Linux system Sounds like Lindows to me :) M$, #Make2020GreatAgain. Give us "https://www.lindows.rocks https://www.lindows.rocks" complete with the catchy song and Windows 2000 GUI.