Will Virtual Appliances replace **Some** custom distributions?

Will Virtual Appliances replace **Some** custom distributions?

Posted Aug 23, 2007 12:57 UTC (Thu) by JimCallahan (guest, #46959)
In reply to: Will Virtual Appliances replace **Some** custom distributions? by JimCallahan
Parent article: The anatomy of a Linux distribution

Imagine this scenario, a researcher/manager has a Windows PC at work and uses Microsoft Office (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint & MS Access) and Lotus Notes, while having an Apple PC at home using iLife (Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb) and iWork.

On both the Windows work PC and Apple Mac home PC the manager runs VM software (either proprietary VMWare or open source XEN).

The manager keeps professional tools on a 4 gigabyte keyring USB drive.

The manager's profession might be bioinformatics, economics, statistics, engineering, chemistry, education or any other field that has a rich set of open source tools.

The tools run in their own (guest) operating system environment distinct from the primary (host) operating systems in use at home or work. The IT Department likes the fact that only the virtual machine software hits the real Windows PC registry.

I expect the above scenario will be commonplace in less than 3 years! By 2010 we will all be running multiple OS in virtual machines. Look at your Sunday newspaper adds -- all the big box retailers are advertising dual core notebook computers with a gigabyte of RAM for $500.

Given the recent VMWare IPO (the largest since Google) can we doubt that we are entering an era when virtual machines will become ubiquitous?

Of course their is always the "Grandmother test." Right now I am suggesting to my mother that her next computer should be an Apple Mac, use iLife to manipulate photos and run her remaining Windows apps (AOL, TurboTax?) in VMWare Fusion.

Yup, VMs are coming...

Jim Callahan
Orlando, FL

---

(Log in to post comments)