VMware Workstation Shifting from Proprietary Code to Using Upstream KVM • Hacker News Board

Re: VMware Workstation Shifting from Proprietary Code to Using Upstream KVM

#41

Post by nineteen999 » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 9:23 AM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #26

I think this is great, at least on a personal level. I've been running esxi to host my home infrastructure for many years. But Broadcom took that away. As such, I've been looking around for a replacement, and if KVM can now support VMWare VMs natively, that will make my migration process a lot simpler. Or am I missing something important?

Its worth noting that Workstation and ESXi formats are essentially different anyway, traditionally you needed to use VMware converter to convert between the formats. Pretty sure KVM has supported the VMware disk formats forever so you probably can already migrate the VM's without too much work (just installing a few drivers inside the guest OS etc).

Re: VMware Workstation Shifting from Proprietary Code to Using Upstream KVM

#42

Post by belthesar » Tue, Nov 12, 2024, 4:31 AM UTC

burnt-resistor wrote: post #33

VMware Workstation/Fusion team has always been underfunded and understaffed. Every year, they release a reskinned version with a few minor features to justify the cost to buyers. They really don't have the cycles to maintain a competitive product that would include major changes or large feature advancements. (Fusion is basically a dead product because it can't do performant x86_64 emu/v12n on arm Macs. The closest r…

Ironically, x86 performance of Win applications on UTM is faster when using Windows' ARM to x86 translation rather than using QEMU virtualization, because it can do Rosetta 2 like translation of only the specific application code and not the dependent libraries.

Re: VMware Workstation Shifting from Proprietary Code to Using Upstream KVM

#43

Post by bityard » Tue, Nov 12, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

CommanderData wrote: post #17

lmz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't KVM be part of the kernel interface to userspace? The emulated devices aren't really part of KVM, are they?

I was thinking due to modified code and copyleft/GPL it could force copyleft on Workstation, but I may have misunderstood how it works.

Yes, you probably misunderstand. KVM is part of the Linux kernel, which is GPL licensed. The GPL only prohibits derivations of a GPL'd projects from using a difference license. (Actually, copyright law prohibits this.) Using one piece of software alongside another does not count as a derivation. It has always been possible to run proprietary software on the Linux kernel, for example. This is no different.