Episode: 1289
Title: HPR1289: Short Xen Update From JWP
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1289/hpr1289.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:59:54

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Good day hacker public radio community. Hey I'm JWP you can reach me at JWP5 at hotmail.com.
Hey I'm doing a little episode today about Zen. I listened to the Linux link tech show
episode 5 of 7 and they had Russ on and it was great that Russ was there. I had no idea
that they were doing it got me thinking about Zen again and you know I too had thought
wow Zen you know I didn't know anybody that was using it in their private life really
anymore and I was a little surprised that you know that they had gone back to the open
source model a little bit and so it was it was a pretty good show but you know Russ I thought
you know left out some things and that you know normal everyday people you know might want
to know about Zen and why Zen is really still with us in the Linux environment and you know
and I compete in the enterprise space with Linux I sell Linux every day and the solutions that
we have and and such things and and I deal with a lot of Red Hat and a lot of Suza and you know
I do sell some Windows boxes you know it's really basically anything in the enterprise resource
management space you know I really try to do and so Oracle has their Linux
and they base their what they call Oracle VM on Zen and when the Linux foundation thought that
KVM was getting you know going to be the way they took the hooks out of the kernel or it was
proposed to take the hooks out of the kernel or they did take the hooks out for a very short time
period and Oracle paid some money through their membership in the Linux foundation to put those
hooks back in so that they could continue their Linux business so while I'm not a big fan of
anything Oracle you know I guess they give us some choice in the open sport open source space but
you know let's let's not kid ourselves there was a commercial need Oracle needed those hooks put
back into the Linux kernel so that they could sell their Oracle VM and the price I think was like
a really small amount and and the enterprise thing like $50,000 to do it to hire the people to do
that or whatever and I remember reading about it I haven't been able to find the exact source
on the internet about that but when I read that the hooks were didn't take out I thought that
that was sort of the end of Zen because then you had to recompile the kernel yourself and then you
send and then Oracle came and did that and you didn't have to do that anymore and it was like a
multiple choice I'm gonna press a pause button so another of the things that I thought that they
didn't touch on and I'm not sure if it was because I just didn't have script or because they didn't
they don't work around enterprise or they you know I'm just not really sure
and that thing at the tech show what happened right and so I listened to the whole thing and
you know I drive in my car and so maybe it was said that Zen is to become a Linux foundation
collaborative project and I got that off market wire and then I went to the Linux foundation
website and sure enough it is a collaborative project and there's a bunch of companies now doing
stuff within Cisco of course you know with their management solution for how they're gonna
do their blades or is doing something there and Oracle of course is there and you know a bunch
of companies that you you know would think that are absolutely most evil companies in the world
as far as open source goes are right there doing that and Citrix is there too and I do
believe that Russ was right when he said that you know that that they're going back to the roots
are trying to try to get their base back because I can tell you that they won't relevant
in the enterprise space anymore you know nobody really wants the type one hypervisor
you know the money that Red Hat wants for the Red Hat virtualization and that Susan wants for
their Susan virtualization products are very very comparable to the money that Citrix wants for
theirs and you know if I think about Citrix I think about a VDI you know I don't think about Citrix
in any other space other than VDI really really and don't forget that Microsoft is a huge investor
in Citrix so you know so all that there that that evil is there the Oracle and Microsoft probably
two of the most evil you know closed source companies are right there you know when you start
talking about Zen and you know money was given by Oracle Microsoft owns a huge portion of Citrix
so warning warning you know you know that is it really open you know no because
Microsoft and Oracle are given the money for this you know they gave the Linux foundation
money for this so I don't think that it's really an open product even though it says that
it's an open product then you know if you look at who's collaborating you know Cisco a huge
closed source company you know with monster things Intel you know another really scary
company when it comes to proprietary proprietary things you know and I often think about what
Intel did with itenium and you know they're awful horrifying things that they did the HP
and the itenium community and their development on tinium and so I really you know didn't get the
VOD Rust was saying at all you know because of where the money came from to keep that project going
it's not an individual contributor thing like KVM it really it really isn't right and I realized
that they're thinking about that but it's it's just not and and you know be be warned that you know
if you go when you do big Zen stuff that you're helping Oracle and you're helping Citrix
and in turn you're helping Microsoft you know and I just don't think that that's you know
the way to go if you're going to be a truly open source thing and I realized that the Linux
foundation needs money they have to pay leaners and they have to pay a bunch of other people and
they have a lot of employees that they have to pay and so they need Oracle to give them the 50,000
here and they need Cisco to give them money and various other things but it you know I'm really
becoming really really concerned about where they take the money from and you know if you look
at their board members on the Linux foundation you know all of the people from IBM until
you know HP is there a bunch of you know a bunch of people that you know really don't have any
business and the open source community you know that they're doing this at an enterprise level
and they're on the board and they're giving the Linux foundation money and there's full-time jobs
and so it's not really a free kind of thing that people think it is it looks just look at the
border directors for the Linux foundation you know and and I realized that Zen is supposed to be
a collaborative thing with the Linux foundation but I'm really really just not feeling it
okay so now we have now I've branded a little bit about you know the how the Linux foundation
makes this money and and why it's good or bad a little bit and I guess overall I don't know
don't know if it's good or bad but just remember that it was a money thing not a a freedom thing
or not a cool thing or not something that people who wanted to go out there and do it was something
that a company needed done okay so let's talk about a little bit about the hypervisors just for a
second and a hypervisor and computing a hypervisor a virtual machine monitor VM is a piece of computer
software firmware hardware that creates and runs virtual machines okay now there's two types out
there there's a native type which is the bare metal and there's a hosted type so the native
type is called type one and the host and the type two is called hosted and if you look at
the schematic you know they both start with hardware okay and then type one has a hypervisor
and then it branches out to OS different OS gifts and type two it also has
it instead of having the hypervisor smooth over like peanut butter it has a central OS
and then it goes out to the hypervisor guess and so so VMware and KDM or type two ends in is
the type one and advantages and disadvantages I'll go over in just a second so I read on the internet
and it seems that if it's built into the kernel if it's not built into the kernel so there seems to be
not very clear as to if it's native or not native if it uses the chip or not uses the chip
and the old days the type one was sort of like a peanut butter where you spread it over the over
bread and you isolated everything and it really didn't matter the hardware underneath you just
had Zen on top of it and ran your systems nowadays I have virtualization built into the CPU
and I know VMware uses it I know KVM uses it and I couldn't can't believe that you know
Citrix wouldn't have it built into Zen as well the the main issue that I have is is who sponsors
Zen okay who given the money right and like I said Citrix is owned in large part by Microsoft
and Oracle made the donation to the Linux foundation to put the hooks back into the kernel
and Oracle you know we all see how that open office versus Libra office thing worked out
and so bar beware on all of that okay hey well thank you all so much for your time
enjoy I hope you'll have a great day bye bye now
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