Future Workstation: minimum host Linux version/distro

[ksc]

General announcement / inquiry before we start making large-scale changes.

The next version of hosted products (no, I can't say what that version will be nor when it might enter beta) is likely to drop support for very old host OSes. Seven-year-old operating systems are just a little too far out of date, especially on the Linux side. I've gotten product management feedback, and want some community feedback too.

The planned expectations for minimum host OS are:

- Windows: XP SP2 minimum. (No enforced breakages for 2K, but QA will stop testing it)

- Linux: RHEL4u5 minimum. More generally, kernel 2.6.9 and glibc 2.3.4.

(Common host OSes we expect to work are RHEL4, SUSE10, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. The full expected support list is not publicly available.)

Comments?

(Trivia: ws6.5 is built with options that should be good back to RedHat 7.3 - that's linux 2.4.18 and glibc 2.2.5, released in 2002)

Edit: Just to be clear - we are discussing host OS only. Not guest OS.

[wila]

In order to go forward, you sometimes have to cut off some backward compatiblity. Personally I see no problems with that.

If you don't want to move your host OS to something newer.. then it is OK to not be able to install the latest software, sounds perfectly acceptable to me.

Especially as the main popular OS's are still covered in what you are suggesting as minimum OS.

Thanks for asking.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[kingneutron]

[[The next major milestone

we are looking towards is requiring 64-bit processors. Nearly everyone

on this forum has such hardware, but our data shows that in general it

is too soon for such a change. In a few years, maybe.]]

--Personally I would appreciate it if Vmware delays that requirement for the next few years. 32-bit is still pretty ubiquitous for hosts, and one of vmware's selling points is that it (still) works well on older hardware that doesn't have virtualization support in the processor.

--One way to encourage the transition however, is to make more tweaks to the 64-bit side of things, and maybe allow some benchmarks published that show "performance is better on the 64-bit Vmware code than the 32" -- that, I believe, would encourage more folks to migrate to 64 eventually.

./. If you have appreciated my response, please remember to apply Helpful/Correct points. TIA

[blackpuma]

I don't have any problem with upping the minimum OS requirements to WinXPSP2 or a 2.6 kernel.

The next major milestone we are looking towards is requiring 64-bit processors. Nearly everyone on this forum has such hardware,

No no no no no no... please proceed very carefully there. You're right... it's too soon.

When CPU clock speeds were following Moore's law, we purchased new hardware every 18 months. Ever since CPU clock speeds stopped going up our purchasing of new machines has slowed to a crawl. We've been swapping out hard drives, adding memory, upgrading video cards, buying newer flat panel displays... but no new machine has been bought for two years or so. The newest machine is my laptop, a first generation (32 bit, Intel Core Duo) MacBook Pro. The newest machine running Workstation 6.5 is a dual-CPU (not dual core) Athlon 2400. Yes, it dates from before dual cores becoming available. It'll probably be replaced next since large capacity PATA drives are scarce.

Note that for us it's hard drive availability (and memory capacity) that's driving the upgrade decision these days, not CPU power.

[oreeh]

The next major milestone we are looking towards is requiring 64-bit processors ...

I agree with blackpuma here.

[continuum]

Hmm - I would like to have a completely 64 bit based version as soon as possible.

I'd like to use it with the 2k8 64 bit version WAIK. That LiveCD can only run 64bit apps.

Maybe two versions ? ....

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[oreeh]

Maybe two versions ? ....

Why not

[RDPetruska]

>No no no no no no... please proceed very carefully there. You're right... it's too soon.

I completely agree! There are plenty of us out here who cannot afford to buy new computers or parts all the time. ESPECIALLY with the economy right now. My Fortune 500 company has been idling production, consolidating production, and delaying major new construction projects... the writing is definitely on the wall that IT will be cut soon. As it is I don't have enough money to meet my current expense, without worrying about losing my job, let alone have extra money to upgrade my computers, simply because that's the latest trend.

Robert

[blackpuma]

Maybe two versions ? ....

To be fair, the original post did say not now, but in the future.

There is no reason why VMware couldn't focus on 64-bit performance; keep the feature set the same, but slowly shift their resources to emphasize 64 bits. In maybe five years 32 bits will be the realm of microcontrollers, with no server or desktop being 32 bits; timing depends on how long the old machines keep humming.

Heck, we still have a 3GHz P4 server that's still running like a champ. I think the power supply will give out first, with no replacement parts in sight.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 4
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 2992.886
cache size      : 1024 KB

[RDPetruska]

>Heck, we still have a 3GHz P4 server that's still running like a champ.

I still have a Pentium (1, non-MMX) 200 MHz PC running fine!

Robert

[Scissor]

Heck, we still have a 3GHz P4 server that's still running like a champ.

I still have a Pentium (1, non-MMX) 200 MHz PC running fine!

But are either of you running Workstation 6.5 on your 6+ year old computers?

[RDPetruska]

But are either of you running Workstation 6.5 on your 6+ year old computers?

No, but the main computers that I do run it on are running XP Pro 32-bit, as there are no 64-bit drivers for all of my devices. And only my desktop PC has VT extensions so that I can even run 64-bit guests (and I only upgraded the motherboard/CPU/etc. to that hardware after 6 years or so). My laptop (which is where I most commonly run Workstation) is almost 4 years old, and I have no plans or money to replace that anytime soon (like at least 2 years or more)... and it runs Workstation 6.5 extremely well.

[blackpuma]

Heck, we still have a 3GHz P4 server that's still running like a champ.

But are either of you running Workstation 6.5 on your 6+ year old computers?

It's not a screamer, obviously, but yes, Workstation 6.5 for Linux (running CentOS 5 as the host OS) works great.

I actively use Workstation to do R&D testing on this old P4. We've added bigger hard drives, and bumped the memory up to 3GB.

[blackpuma]

I actively use Workstation to do R&D testing on this old P4. We've added bigger hard drives, and bumped the memory up to 3GB.

The VMs are all running 32-bit CentOS 5, also.

[birdie]

I'm quite comfortable with these minimum requirements for host OSes.

And if user feedback does matter for you, I still hope that

1) VMWare UI's to become lighter (just run VirtualBox to feel a difference) and more responsive;

2) VMWare download available as several packages: Core, Guest OS additions, binary Kernel modules (for Linux).

Thank you!