VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld) [LWN.net]

NetworkWorld takes a look at two VMWare projects that are aimed at running containers inside the VM. "VMware has created Photon as an OS that can run in vSphere. VMware says it’s a “lightweight” Linux OS that has only the basic elements required to package applications in containers and run them inside virtual machines. Because of its minimalist feature set, Project Photon is meant to boot up quickly, which is a key advantage of using containers. Project Photon supports many container image platforms, including those from Docker (which is both an open source container runtime and the name of the company that is commercializing it), as well as container images from CoreOS (called “rkt”) and Pivotal (named “Garden”)." VMWare also announced a beta version of Project Lightwave, "which is an identity and access management tool meant to provide an extra security layer for containers."

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VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 2:26 UTC (Tue) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (1 responses)

It's amazing that Network World doesn't mention Software Freedom Conservancy and Christoph Hellwig's lawsuit against VMWare. It's encouraging that VMWare is releasing the source to Photon and Lightwave, though.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 9:38 UTC (Tue) by ab (subscriber, #788) [Link]

Lightwave source is not public yet but from Youtube's demo it looks like it is based on Likewise-open or PowerBroker's code. It would be interesting to see what are the advantages they have over the original versions and how much of the effort is going to be shared.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 4:47 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (6 responses)

https://github.com/vmware/photon

The readme is fun.
RPMs for its package management...
Pre-requisites build OS is Ubuntu 14.04....
Wow...just..wow...

It's like building an OS with the friendliness of a cat and the cleanliness of a dog. (Simon's quote for the unwashed in the readership)

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 4:59 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (3 responses)

In other words, perfectly ordinary behavior in the proprietary world.

Just say no.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 7:32 UTC (Tue) by kugel (subscriber, #70540) [Link] (2 responses)

This too:

Settings:

Make sure /bin/sh is a symbolic link pointing to /bin/bash

If /bin/sh is pointing /bin/dash, execute the following:

rm -f /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 11:03 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Ugh. That's disgusting. Even better was one project I worked on where the solution was a custom python27 package and the instructions included patching the shebang in every Python script in /usr/bin to explicitly use python24. This was on RHEL5. Luckily, we were able to convince them to put 27 in their single script which needed it instead of having absolutely absurd requirements.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 12:03 UTC (Tue) by zyga (subscriber, #81533) [Link]

I thought that people that get paid to do things know better. dpkg-reconfigure dash. But then again, they do not.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 7:34 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (1 responses)

They seem to have done most of RPM packaging themselves, only based a couple of packages on Fedora.

Why would have they done this? Seems just like a terrible waste of engineering resources to me. A NIH syndrome at its best?

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 22, 2015 5:46 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

A foolish director level who came to my proprietary software employer from Red Hat tried for a while to get us to make our own proprietary Linux distribution. I was almost hoping we'd do it because it would have been so comical.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 6:54 UTC (Tue) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link]

I'd have thought that VMWare would be having enough trouble with GPL compliance at the moment, no? Wasn't there a lawsuit over their "mini-kernel" that they ship with some products?

VMWare has given you a pony...

Posted Apr 21, 2015 10:37 UTC (Tue) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

The saddle doesn't match the bridle, the plaiting on the mane is a bit weird, there isn't enough food, I don't like its name and, taken as a whole, it's the wrong sort of pony.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 12:06 UTC (Tue) by zyga (subscriber, #81533) [Link] (3 responses)

Looking at their repository I also see this:

https://github.com/vmware/photon#complete-build-environme...

Yes, a vmware product uses vagrant, which uses (here) virtualbox, by oracle.

I don't know if this or the rpm on Ubuntu thing is more nuts.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 13:15 UTC (Tue) by kylesm (guest, #102103) [Link] (2 responses)

There is a commercial add-on for Vagrant to allow it to work with VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation. Hashicorp's post about Photon even talks about it: https://hashicorp.com/blog/vagrant-vmware-photon.html

I'm sure VMware either obtained licenses for it in bulk or individual developers have opted to expense the license. [Disclaimer: I worked for VMware until 2013]

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 13:37 UTC (Tue) by zyga (subscriber, #81533) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes I know but the average developer probably doesn't have that add-on. I own VMWare Workstation 11, license I use vagrant but I'm not spending money on an add on that does a few api calls. I don't think I'm alone in this situation. In the end VMWare kind of needs VirtualBox for one of its products, at least as long as the community is concerned.

VMware just created its first Linux OS, and it’s container-friendly (NetworkWorld)

Posted Apr 21, 2015 23:59 UTC (Tue) by kylesm (guest, #102103) [Link]

To be entirely frank, VMware doesn't care about the community. F/OSS to them is either a licensing requirement (due to use of OSS code) or a marketing gimmick.

There will very likely be few to no pull requests from anyone in the community for any open source project created by VMware. Most VMware projects don't even have contributor license agreements (CLAs) so they'd likely be unable to accept patches anyway.

In terms of Photon adoption, I don't expect anyone except VMware's enterprise customers will ever touch it, and I'm sure said customers will probably pick up a pre-built ISO instead of building it themselves so there's a good chance the only folks using vagrant to build Photon will be the VMware employees maintaining it.