On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 08:55:26AM -0400, Edward Ned Harvey spake >> thusly: >>> You're basically not going to run paravirtualized windows in a linux >>> host, for example. >> >> Note that there is no technical reason why this cannot be done. The Xen >> guys at the University of Cambridge who started Xen had access to the >> Windows source code thanks to assistance of Microsoft's Cambridge >> research laboratories. They had a paravirtualized Windows running under >> Xen years ago. Of course Microsoft would not let them freely license >> that. > > Agreed. No technical reason why it can't be done - it's not technically > impossible. It's only practically impossible due to logistics obstacles. > The obstacle is not inherent in the technology, it's inherent in the people > using the technology. Which is just as important as technical obstacles.
I don't think that's actually correct. The problem is in adoption of the Xen APIs for paravirtualization and getting them standardized into the kernel and getting Microsoft to care about such a niche application and do the work to support paravirtualization (at least as a guest). I believe that there's been work on getting the Xen APIs into the kernel, and Xen has been working with Microsoft on getting them into Windows. > The same reason why you use IPSEC or whatever, instead of just tunneling > everything in the wide world across https. > > The same reason why you use SIP for voice, and H323 for video, when either > could be used for either. > > The same reason why you can't migrate your company off of SMTP. > > The same reason why most people still use Windows. I think the more correct analogy would really be back in 1991 when there was gopher, wais, http, etc and http was not the obvious protocol winner. The question is if the Xen paravirt APIs are more like http and will become adopted and widespread, or if they're more like wais which will be forgotten in 10 years... _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
