Virtualization , was: New Debian Linux DESTROYS SYSTEMS

Noah Roberts

In the course of a year, I see a lot of different businesses. Most of them are heartily sick of the constant care and attention demanded by Windows. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "I wish we could go back to pencil and paper". Green ledger sheets and roomfulls of clerks are of course impractical today; they'd be at a compebreastive disadvantage, but the constant, never ending buttault of viri, spam and spyware just disgusts them.

Yeah, yeah, I know: Linux-Unix are not immune to such problems. But it's far, far less, and while Windows apologists insist that it is only the popularity of Microsoft that causes this, that's obviously not true: if it were, why is Longhorn trying to change their security model to be more Unix like with concepts like Least-Privilege User Account and Protected Administrator?

The fact is, Windows has a really crappy security architecture. To give Redmond some credit, a lot of it is due to slovenly habits by third party application developers. But there are core problems that encourage that, so Bill and the Boyz don't get off scott-free.

(I was just interrupted by my wife squirting a hose through the screen of a window she thought was closed. I am sitting by that window - there must be an analogy to Windows security in there.)

Anyway, I sometimes think that the Microsoft defenders, or at least those that aren't employees and therefore driven by other motives, protest so loudly because they realize how bad things really are but are dependent because they are so heavily invested, financially and emotionally. It would hurt terribly to turn their backs on Microsoft and switch to Linux, BSD or OS X.

I'm going to float a little ballon here. Most of you know that Apple has announced that they will be switching to Intel chips. Obviously they are going to put in some protection so that you won't be able to install Mac OS X on any old non-Apple PC, but the reverse of that is unlikely to be true: if Vmware or some other virtualization software can be had for the Intel Mac OS X, that would let both Windows and Linux (and quite a few lesser known OSes) be run as guest operating systems without instruction set emulation. That ability, should it become reality, opens up the corporate desktop world to both OS X and Linux, which is a pretty powerful one-two punch. No more worrying about whether you have the right OS for the app you want to run; you do. Does it run better on Linux than OS X? No problem at all. Still have some "must have" Windows apps? Again, no problem. Do you feel BSD is the safest place for daily activity? Fine, then OS X is where you'll run your mail and browsing. Think Linux is better at that? Run 'em there. In other words, have your cake and eat it too.

That would also free developers from the tyranny of "wrong choice". Many now are "stuck" with Windows because of the popularity factor, but would prefer Linux or Mac for development. If this caught on, developers would have whole new markets to exploit. I think that Windows development would die a rest of attrition (aw gee, what a shame - not!) but niche OSes and less popular Linux distros could benefit greatly..

I know that someone is going to point out that, disregarding OS X, you can do that now and it hasn't exactly caused a sea-change in the computing world. I am of the opinion that adding OS X to that mix could be the force that moves to the necessary tipping point. Yeah, yeah, some Linux folks are going to ask "what the hell do we need OS X for?" and some Mac folks are going to ask the opposite question, but I see this as something with powerful synergestic possibilities.

Not that I've ever been right about anything else, of course. But maybe I am this time :-)

-- Tony Lawrence