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He spoke to an audience gathered for the LinuxWorld conference here at Moscone Center, addressing the growth of the open-source Linux operating system--which he said he hoped would hit $1 billion in licensing revenue by 2011--and what it means for both enterprise data centers, business computing and consumer applications.
Despite its recent growth, Linux is lagging in terms of the worldwide combined paid server operating system environments by Microsoft and others. Combining the use of Linux with virtualization is not such an odd pairing, rather, the two "play to one another very strongly," he said, particularly when it comes to the re-emerging trend of virtualization.
"To encourage use of Linux for virtual environments is to make an easier way to do virtual machines," he said.
Virtualization is when one computer runs several operating systems, or virtual machines. Dell said it would be embracing the virtualization trend again earlier this year.
Pairing Linux and virtualization to manage and consolidate enterprise data centers is something Dell is using back at home base. Three thousand of Dell's own servers run Linux, including its so-called mission-critical applications, such as the company's internal employee, supply chain and financial-management systems, Kettler said.
For business clients, the progress from last year's LinuxWorld has been remarkable, he said. Many of the CIOs he meets have concerns over security breaches from attacks on machines or a virus downloaded to a machine on their network, he said, and separate, virtual machines can limit the damage.
"What if you created a virtual machine that is an isolated Web-browsing machine?" Kettler asked. "If a machine is dedicated to Web browsing, and you've downloaded something you shouldn't have, you can kill this machine and restart it" separate from the other machines without also killing the rest of a user's work.
Having that capability on a desktop is "not far off," Kettler said.
For consumers, there are plenty of practical applications for virtual machines at home: on a single computer, consumers could have virtual machines dedicated to gaming, a media server, Web browsing and productivity, which is "a real opportunity" now and in the future for the Linux community to show its creativity, he said.
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this and what we've been seeing on Macs running Parallel's virtual
machine to run Windows, and Linux...
Imitation is a form of flattery(?)
These apple guys think history started with the release of the ipod. It just cracks me up.
I have Parallel 3 on my Macbook...it is HORRIBLE (super slow) compared to the new fusion. VMware owns this space and owns it on Linux, Windows, and soon on OS X.
I am a Mac fan but god get over youself...Imitation...yeah Apple imitates everyone else most of the time. The sad fact is Apple needs Fusion/Parallel to run the many..many Windows Apps.
for this. Linux is going to take off through the use of VMware and
virtual appliances.
Vwmare is run on Windows more than anything and more VM's are Windows VM's than anything.
Wake up please.
I have basically ended up waiting for native Linux apps to mature and replace my dependence on Windows apps. And you know what, that has actually happened already. Linux apps are maturing fast and now I don't even bother opening a VM anymore. I can now edit high def. video on Ubuntu using only FOSS software.
If and when VMWare and Xen and KVM get around to supporting OpenGL, I doubt if I'll need it anymore. Too little too late.