"Microsoft Wants To Create A Complete Virtualization Stack With Linux"

[Michael_S]

The world's most popular consumer OS is Android, so Linux as a tech has won there too. Of course no-one uses Android because of open source, and almost all Android devices are effectively "tivoised" and can't really be used as open source. But the problem IMO is not money, it's the fact that Android aside, there is simply no consumer or desktop-grade open source OS that's really, 100% ready. Ubuntu, Fedora, PureOS etc. are 90% there but that last 10% proverbially takes 90% of the effort.

The truth is what Linus has said long ago but many seem to refuse to understand it: a server OS is the easy part. A desktop or mobile OS is far more difficult to design and develop. But a significant part of the community still cherishes the idea that desktop computing and end user-facing applications (not web based) are somehow inferior and less worthy.

I would reverse that and say the problem is money, because no company has figured out how to make tens of billions of dollars off of FOSS consumer operating systems.

Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Elementary, Deepin, etc... etc... will always trail Windows and MacOS and tivo-ized Linux like Android for features and driver support because they don't have even 1% of the resources to invest on their products as the proprietary options.

It's not that the community thinks desktop-facing applications are inferior and less worthy, it's that no matter how much they care, they can't match the proprietary options.

[jacob]

Same thing here as in my earlier post about Microsoft.

Google is (and always has been) a monopolist.

They want to control the platform.

Do you see a pattern ?

No, I actually don't. Every platform is by definition controlled by someone (otherwise it's not a platform). The Linux kernel itself is controlled, quite tightly in fact, by Linus. Virtually all FOSS projects from GNOME through Debian to OpenBSD are controlled platforms, and that's what makes them successful and useful. What makes someone a monopolist is when they take active steps to lock users in and prevent any form of competition. In the 90s, Microsoft deployed underhanded or downright illegal tactics to stop anyone from selling a computer with anything other than Windows. Even offering a dual boot BeOS+Windows was a step too far, and don't a local shop dare selling generic PCs with OS/2, or else! This has largely changed. Today HP, Dell, Lenovo etc will happily sell you desktops and laptops with Linux preinstalled, and of course there are the likes of System76, Raptor or Purism who specialise in Linux machines.

Regarding Google, frankly I think there are a borderline case as far as monopolism goes. There are unquestionably evil, but IMO it's mainly because of their invasive and Big Brother practices, them acting as a self-appointed censor and political enforcer, all the while happily bowing before the Chinese or Russian dictatorial regimes.

[starshipeleven]

I hope you're right about this. The reason why I said what I did was because I got an error dialog that stated that hyperv could not run nested outside of hyperv. I was sure it's a policy since it was detecting that hyperv was running in a virtualized environment which was not hyperv and choose not to run because of that. I was running the VM with "kvm64" CPU model tested under Windows 1803, 1809, and 1903.

Hmm, maybe it was a misleading error description meant to scare off people? (running Hyper-V as nested guest over another hypervisor is not officially supported but it's not blocked afaik)

From what I recall, you will need to pass special parameters to QEMU to expose special features Hyper-V needs or it won't work, but I don't know if that changed since then. See the blog of the redhat guy that added this functionality to KVM https://ladipro.wordpress.com/2017/0...-in-kvm-guest/
or Proxmox documentation about that (which also mentions Hyper-V works as nested hypervisor) https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Nested_...n#Requirements

Also see this support thread from Proxmox forums about a guy that says that it works on his Intel system but blows up on AMD hardware (and you can see the options he is using) https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/ne...working.56497/
(also someone a few months later claims Hyper-V is working as a guest under VMWare ESXi with just a warning popup)

this is the important line, the arguments for Hyper-V are using hv_ prefix, and I think you need to specify a real CPU model, or "host" to mean it's the same as the host.

-cpu EPYC,+kvm_pv_unhalt,+kvm_pv_eoi,hv_spinlocks=0x1fff,hv_vapic,hv_time,hv_reset,hv_vpindex,hv_runtime,hv_relaxed,hv_synic,hv_stimer,hv_tlbflush,hv_ipi,enforce,vendor=AuthenticAMD

You can add these by editing manually the xml file if you are using libvirt https://www.libvirt.org/kbase/qemu-p...-security.html

[ossuser]

The world's most popular consumer OS is Android, so Linux as a tech has won there too. Of course no-one uses Android because of open source, and almost all Android devices are effectively "tivoised" and can't really be used as open source. But the problem IMO is not money, it's the fact that Android aside, there is simply no consumer or desktop-grade open source OS that's really, 100% ready. Ubuntu, Fedora, PureOS etc. are 90% there but that last 10% proverbially takes 90% of the effort.

The truth is what Linus has said long ago but many seem to refuse to understand it: a server OS is the easy part. A desktop or mobile OS is far more difficult to design and develop. But a significant part of the community still cherishes the idea that desktop computing and end user-facing applications (not web based) are somehow inferior and less worthy.

Same thing here as in my earlier post about Microsoft.

Google is (and always has been) a monopolist.

They want to control the platform.

Do you see a pattern ?

[Jabberwocky]

Sorry what? Afaik you can enable nested virtualization on Win10 as long as it received the Win10 Anniversary update (an update it received in 2016).
Maybe you have an AMD system? Because they only recently added the ability to run nested virtualization on AMD systems to Win10 and Winserver. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...t/ba-p/1434841
And that was a Hyper-V limitation, not a businness decision. Not even Winserver could do nested virtualization on Ryzen/Epyc before this update.

They also have provided an unlimited GUI-less Hyper-V server version since the beginning https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/eval...-v-server-2019

I hope you're right about this. The reason why I said what I did was because I got an error dialog that stated that hyperv could not run nested outside of hyperv. I was sure it's a policy since it was detecting that hyperv was running in a virtualized environment which was not hyperv and choose not to run because of that. I was running the VM with "kvm64" CPU model tested under Windows 1803, 1809, and 1903.

I ran it on my Ryzen 2700X and when I tried host-passthrough, host-model or epyc windows ran at 100% CPU usage on all cores. This time around I agree that looked like a bug or unsupported cpu model. What was strange is that many of the bug reports said that it worked in previous versions of windows. I was using Windows 1809 and Linux 5.6 at the time.

I have switched to Linux 5.8 since then and Windows has switched itself to 2004. I'll try it again and collect more proof along the way.

[jacob]

Linux and open source have won on the server side. It has lost on the consumer side and will never win, because there's too much money to be made by locking down consumer operating systems and promoting planned obsolescence.

The world's most popular consumer OS is Android, so Linux as a tech has won there too. Of course no-one uses Android because of open source, and almost all Android devices are effectively "tivoised" and can't really be used as open source. But the problem IMO is not money, it's the fact that Android aside, there is simply no consumer or desktop-grade open source OS that's really, 100% ready. Ubuntu, Fedora, PureOS etc. are 90% there but that last 10% proverbially takes 90% of the effort.

The truth is what Linus has said long ago but many seem to refuse to understand it: a server OS is the easy part. A desktop or mobile OS is far more difficult to design and develop. But a significant part of the community still cherishes the idea that desktop computing and end user-facing applications (not web based) are somehow inferior and less worthy.

[Michael_S]

I wouldn't put it in terms of being satisfied or dissatisfied. I would simply say I'm probably more optimistic. The GPL and the FOSS ecosystem have proven to be strong and resilient against attacks. SCO tried to destroy Linux but in their jihad they only killed themselves and no-one else. Microsoft may have been evil but unlike SCO they are certainly not stupid, and besides, they have chosen the only sensible course of action, which is to realise that FOSS is here to stay and given that fact, they might just as well look for a way to benefit from it. Today Microsoft is making megabucks from Linux and trying to sabotage it is probably the last thing they would want to do.

Linux and open source have won on the server side. It has lost on the consumer side and will never win, because there's too much money to be made by locking down consumer operating systems and promoting planned obsolescence.

[jacob]

I think we're saying the same things, you're just more satisfied with the status quo than I am. All major corporations have the same core philosophy, "We won't stab you in the back unless it's profitable." You can't ever let your guard down with any of them.

I wouldn't put it in terms of being satisfied or dissatisfied. I would simply say I'm probably more optimistic. The GPL and the FOSS ecosystem have proven to be strong and resilient against attacks. SCO tried to destroy Linux but in their jihad they only killed themselves and no-one else. Microsoft may have been evil but unlike SCO they are certainly not stupid, and besides, they have chosen the only sensible course of action, which is to realise that FOSS is here to stay and given that fact, they might just as well look for a way to benefit from it. Today Microsoft is making megabucks from Linux and trying to sabotage it is probably the last thing they would want to do.

[Michael_S]

This is exactly the same as IBM, Google etc... even RedHat or SUSE. Corporations are there to make money, not to support some tech because they love it. Microsoft was singularly evil towards open source back in the day of Gates & Ballmer with their "Halloween Documents" strategy and the SCO affair they orchestrated in the backstage, but that's not the case today. I would say MS is overall a good neighbour to Linux and a fine FOSS community member. Of course they do it for their own profit, but can you show me a single for-profit company operating in the FOSS-Linux ecosystem that is different in that regard?

I think we're saying the same things, you're just more satisfied with the status quo than I am. All major corporations have the same core philosophy, "We won't stab you in the back unless it's profitable." You can't ever let your guard down with any of them.

[jacob]

I think this is entirely a reaction to market conditions, and as soon as the market changes or Microsoft devises a business model that makes proprietary options more profitable, they will shift away.

Now, it's still completely fine to praise, use, and even contribute to their current open source projects. The fact that they can shift away in the future doesn't mean they can destroy the stuff they already released.

But this move to open source is not, "Microsoft has decided to be less evil", just, "Microsoft realized open source would be more profitable, for the moment."

This is exactly the same as IBM, Google etc... even RedHat or SUSE. Corporations are there to make money, not to support some tech because they love it. Microsoft was singularly evil towards open source back in the day of Gates & Ballmer with their "Halloween Documents" strategy and the SCO affair they orchestrated in the backstage, but that's not the case today. I would say MS is overall a good neighbour to Linux and a fine FOSS community member. Of course they do it for their own profit, but can you show me a single for-profit company operating in the FOSS-Linux ecosystem that is different in that regard?