Enlightened I/O is a specialized virtualization-aware implementation of high level communication protocols (such as SCSI) that utilize the VMBus directly, bypassing any device emulation layer. This makes the communication more efficient but requires an enlightened guest that is hypervisor and VMBus aware.

The drivers seem to be developed by Novell, so I guess the Boycott Novell guys will have some more coverage^Wrants soon (Update: can’t find the reference on this anymore, so this might be a false statement, sorry. Thanks for pointing out RubenV)

Interesting times on the virtualization front… Although I for one do not plan to replace Xen, xVM or VirtualBox anytime soon.

Sources:

• Microsoft Press Release
• Blog of the 451 Group
• LKML

On a side note: Red Hat entered the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which might show Linux is gaining more interest from enterprises and investors.

All workstations will be converted to Ubuntu desktops, starting this year with 5000-8000 seats, growing to 12000-15000 over the next four years. By 2014, all 70000 (!!!) desktops should be running free software.

There are three major reasons for the full switch:

1. Remove dependency on one single supplier
2.  Gain full control over the whole operating system stack
3. Reduce costs

Nowadays licensing costs sum up to 7000000€ (that’s seven million euros) every year.

I guess this must be one of the largest Linux desktops deployments ever?

Source: AFP

One reason to read this until the end (in case you wouldn’t ):

At first bootup the OpenSuSE bootsplash theme attracts your attention. I really like it, very smooth.

After a successful bootup (using VirtualBox virtualization) the KDE desktop starts. This takes a while, but this can be blamed on the use of a LiveCD, and a virtual machine. The splash screen is very clean, the use of black and rounded corners reminds me of Apple OS X a little, don’t ask me why. The icon animation is nice, although I think the transparency shouldn’t go all the way to completely transparent (at least, that’s what it looks like), an maybe it should change somewhat slower. Next to this, the last icon in row (the KDE icon) is much bigger than the others, which doens’t look nice. Anyway, minor details.

Once booted, the user is presented with his desktop and a ‘Useful Tips’ dialog:

One can immediately notice the new themeing (at least, compared to what I remember of KDE 3.5). The window borders are pretty nice (I like the fact they’re integrated with the window content, notice the curve on top), icons in the dialog are slick. One detail I really dislike is the use of centered text. No clue why this isn’t simply left-aligned.

Once the dialog is closed, one can explore the desktop. As I mentioned in my previous KDE 4 post, I dislike the panel width. I could not figure out how to change this though: when right-clicking the panel in search of some “Properties” function, only panel applet-specific properties can be changed, and the panel border is not draggable. Maybe this setting is hidden somewhere else, but it’s not available in the (IMHO) most logical place.

There are 6 panel applets enabled by default: a menu (which integrates applications, places and system settings, as before, somewhat like the GNOME panel menu Novell created), a task manager, a desktop switcher, the clipboard manager, an applet to manage removable devices, and a clock.

There’s a minor issue with the applet represented by the computer screen: unlike the other applets, when hovering with your mouse above it, no tooltip is displayed denoting what this icon is all about. I could only figure this out once clicking it.

On the upper right corner there’s a hotspot which allows the user to add widgets to his desktop, or to ‘Zoom out’:

I, honestly, have no clue what the use of that is. Luckily you can zoom in again too, although the hotspot context menu is zoomed out to one quarter of its original size too, which is really small (actually, not readable). Bug?

This was not my first Linux experience: my first installation ever, on the same machine, was using a SuSe sample CD my dad got at Cebit2000. This was an evaluation copy of SuSe 6.4, providing kernel 2.2.14, XFree86 3.3.6 and KDE 1.1.2 (well, I can’t remember, that’s what the web tells me now).

Compared to those days (although not that long ago) installing and (especially) using a Linux desktop nowadays could be called somewhat easier

So, have you got any memories of your very first Linux install or a reference to your earliest bug report?