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The Community License page has checkboxes for Alpha and Itanium. The box for "x86 (planned)" is not yet enabled: https://vmssoftware.com/community/community-l

The Community License page has checkboxes for Alpha and Itanium. The box for "x86 (planned)" is not yet enabled: https://vmssoftware.com/community/community-license/ https://vmssoftware.com/community/community-license/ I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this is a VM-only product, but there's something unsatisfying about an O/S that can't boot real hardware.

spijdar 6y ago
In this space it's not too unusual, really. It's not altogether unlike modern AIX or IBM i, which effectively only run on virtual machines managed by a hypervisor built into the firmware on PowerVM machines. Maybe less satisfying since it's less integrated with the hardware, but in a sense the paravirtual devices are kind of just another type of firmware/driver layer. I kind of hope more (new) OSes adopt a similar model. Developing cool new experimental OSes would be easier if real hardware could be "ignored" in favor of just targeting virtio interfaces or something, and IMO that's where the most interesting OS dev is yet to happen. If you're mostly interested in hardware support and raw performance, I think Linux has "done it". But there's a lot left to explore, and maybe it's best to find a way to get Linux to do the heavy lifting.
- cat199 6y ago
  > If you're mostly interested in hardware support and raw performance, I think Linux has "done it". There's alot of room for adjustments/experimentation within the posix-like OS space; Linux is not always the best vehicle for this experimentation (witness various threading/ipc/scheduling differences with others, security protections, etc. that a) exist and/or b) have been imported/emulated in Linux )
  - spijdar 6y ago
    I thought about this a while after this, and yeah, I'd agree. Although as far as scheduling and IPC goes, I'd say this is less about "raw performance" as taking a chunk of CPU cycles and better utilizing it. So a VM running under Linux/KVM could experiment there in useful ways. There are still new/tweaked ways to manage/divide raw hardware, though. Stuff like trying to reduce UI latency which would be hard to do through a PV interface and needs bare metal.
skissane 6y ago
> but there's something unsatisfying about an O/S that can't boot real hardware According to their roadmap [0] they are aiming to release support for running on HPE DL380 servers bare metal this year, followed by support for some 2 socket Dell servers next year. [0] https://vmssoftware.com/about/roadmap/ https://vmssoftware.com/about/roadmap/

spijdar 6y ago

In this space it's not too unusual, really. It's not altogether unlike modern AIX or IBM i, which effectively only run on virtual machines managed by a hypervisor built into the firmware on PowerVM machines. Maybe less satisfying since it's less integrated with the hardware, but in a sense the paravirtual devices are kind of just another type of firmware/driver layer. I kind of hope more (new) OSes adopt a similar model. Developing cool new experimental OSes would be easier if real hardware could be "ignored" in favor of just targeting virtio interfaces or something, and IMO that's where the most interesting OS dev is yet to happen. If you're mostly interested in hardware support and raw performance, I think Linux has "done it". But there's a lot left to explore, and maybe it's best to find a way to get Linux to do the heavy lifting.

cat199 6y ago
> If you're mostly interested in hardware support and raw performance, I think Linux has "done it". There's alot of room for adjustments/experimentation within the posix-like OS space; Linux is not always the best vehicle for this experimentation (witness various threading/ipc/scheduling differences with others, security protections, etc. that a) exist and/or b) have been imported/emulated in Linux )
- spijdar 6y ago
  I thought about this a while after this, and yeah, I'd agree. Although as far as scheduling and IPC goes, I'd say this is less about "raw performance" as taking a chunk of CPU cycles and better utilizing it. So a VM running under Linux/KVM could experiment there in useful ways. There are still new/tweaked ways to manage/divide raw hardware, though. Stuff like trying to reduce UI latency which would be hard to do through a PV interface and needs bare metal.

skissane 6y ago

> but there's something unsatisfying about an O/S that can't boot real hardware According to their roadmap [0] they are aiming to release support for running on HPE DL380 servers bare metal this year, followed by support for some 2 socket Dell servers next year. [0] https://vmssoftware.com/about/roadmap/ https://vmssoftware.com/about/roadmap/