fl0blog

VMware started giving away a free (gratis, not libre) product: VMware Player. This is free virtualisation software, that allows you to run any virtual machine that somebody else created (possibly with their other tools, such as VMware Workstation).

As a free software user, this means you will be able to download complete virtual machines instead of .iso CD-ROM images. This is the next step in the evolution from bootable floppies to bootable CDs and liveCDs. And it’s an evolution that puts proprietary OSes at a disadvantage. Nobody is going to distribute virtual machines with an OS that’s not free.

I’m just hoping that this becomes the platform for future proprietary educational software. The open source camp will tune Xen so that it can run VMware images, and software vendors get 100% cross-platform distribution, thus liberating schools from Windows or Mac monoculture.

Also take a look at KDE klik:/, a nifty system for ‘virtually’ installing applications.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 21:01 and is filed under English, Open source, Software. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.