Will hypervisors make Ubuntu and other Linux operating systems obsolete?

David M Williams
Wednesday, 16 July 2008 21:05

Business IT - Technology

Proponents of hypervisors point out that a great deal of operating system updates are for security purposes. If you have an insecure operating system then you have compromised the security of each application running on top of it. By contrast, it is argued, hypervisors will be extremely small and tight pieces of code. The likelihood of vulnerabilities is reduced by cutting out the bloat.

Yet, despite this, the outlook for Linux is positive. Fundamentally, the hypervisor is a low-level piece of software. Whether it really is implemented within a silicon chip or is a disk-resident piece of software booted before anything else, the fact remains the hypervisor is aimed at getting virtual machines up and running, and making sure hardware interactions work seamlessly and are passed on to the appropriate item of real hardware.

The hypervisors we’re seeing at the moment don’t implement a file system, for instance. They’ll allow a virtual machine to think it is seeing a raw disk, but it will still need to format and carve this up by itself. If an application were communicating directly with the hypervisor it wouldn’t be given a hierarchical file system, but purely access to the tracks and sectors making up the virtual hard drive.
Similarly, the hypervisors don’t provide virtual memory but simply only an interface to the physical RAM within the computer. There’s many other aspects where a hypervisor, by necessity and design, falls short of really actually doing what a user might expect. This makes sense; after all, the hypervisor is just there to kick start the virtual computers and provide a framework. If it did more, if it embodied all the things a productivity app or game call out for then the hypervisor would grow and turn into, well, an operating system. Ergo, it cannot eradicate operating systems; to do so means it must become one.

Ironically, too, due to its free and open software licensing, some hypervisors are being produced which are based on the Linux kernel. And one is based on Microsoft Windows, namely Microsoft’s own offering – which VMWare have argued makes it an unacceptable choice. Who wants to have to keep patching or rebooting the hypervisor, they say.

The shift of the public consciousness towards virtualisation is going to bring about another trend, and here’s where Linux will benefit. The ideas that there is only one operating system choice, or even that the operating system should do everything and cater for every need, will reach the end of their useful lives.

What we’ll find is that no longer will operating systems be chosen because they happened to pre-installed on the computer you bought. Instead, applications of the future will choose their operating system. Within a virtual world it will come down to what you are wanting to achieve and then selecting the operating system that best supports this. Much greater choice is opened up, and the platform that provides a rich suite of productivity applications and tools – all available for free – is pitching itself in prime position.

No, the rise of hypervisors won’t bring Linux to its knees. Instead, the freeing of computers and apps from the base platform can only mean more awareness and prominence of Linux instead.