

No Really: Microsoft giving away Windows Image with redistribution allowed - VonGuard
http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2010/03/22/Have-some-free-Windows.aspx
No tricks. Microsoft is giving away Windows Server 2008. And you can even redistribute the image.
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dpritchett
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 appears to be a no-gui virtualization host
(hypervisor). There's a feature chart here that alludes to an unclear
licensing issue with "guest virtualization rights". [1]

The downloadable image is 1.5 GB.

[1] <http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx>

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mjhnghfh
So I can run windows as a headless baselayer to virtualize paid for copies of
windows. Rather than using Linux or the built in Xen hypervisor.

<shrugs>

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kogir
If you have no interest in virtualizing Windows then this won't be of much use
to you. First class support for Linux is limited to Suse and RedHat
Enterprise.

However, if you're a Microsoft shop and want to virtualize Windows (be it for
production, testing, or development), it's a huge boon. Hyper-V even supports
some awesome features like live migration (moving a VM from one host to
another) with mere seconds of downtime. Similar features in VMWare cost
thousands of dollars.

At Loopt we're going to be using this extensively for development.

~~~
arethuza
Hyper-V is a bit of a pain as it doesn't let you over-commit on memory.

VMWare ESXi looks like a much better bet - I'm currently thinking about moving
40+ VMs in a development environment from Hyper-V to ESX so we can run more of
them at the same time.

~~~
listic
It can be counted as a benefit.

You will appreciate the fact that your hosting provider cannot oversell the
servers. Xen also works like this.

~~~
sharms
Xen actually does support overcommit:
[http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/27/xen-33-feature-
memo...](http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/27/xen-33-feature-memory-
overcommit/)

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barnaby
Wow, I must be behind the times. Microsoft have a headless server? Windows as
a hypervisor?

Thank you for posting this, as this is news to me.

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nollidge
Hey cool, an irritating JS overlay as soon as I open it.

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YogSothoth
I immediately close any site that does this - don't care what they are
offering/selling - if they behave this way, I guarantee their wares aren't
worth bothering with.

It's almost like looking at code, I generally only have to look at the
formatting. You don't see a lot of lame code that's impeccably formatted (nor
a lot of useful websites that do that in-your-face type of advertising).

~~~
rbanffy
Sdtimes is worth clicking on a close button.

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patrickgzill
Note: you must use Intel VT or AMD-V enabled CPUs for this. Opterons that have
only 3 digits in their model number won't work (such as 275, 880, etc), those
with 4 digits (2220, 8218, etc) will.

(edit: looks like non-Windows guest OSes can only be allocated 1 virtual CPU;
for me that is a deal-killer.)

~~~
dotBen
If you want to run non-windows guest OS's then why us Windows as the
host/hypervisor?

~~~
sokoloff
If you were a 99% Windows shop but wanted a linux-based DNS, mediawiki,
subversion or similar server would be one case. (Host mostly Windows guests,
but a small number of non-Windows.)

~~~
mjhnghfh
In which case you would have windows server machines that could run
VirtualPC/VMware/Virtualbox.

The only 'point' of this article is that you can distribute a free windows
base image.

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Slashed
First time I stumbled upon this version of Windows about half a year ago. I
actually installed it on one of my laptops. When it's BOOTed, the "GUI" is
pretty much like in Safe-Mode, only in full display resolution, i.e. a blue
background and a console window. I don't remember exactly, but it was missing
a lot of libraries.. so I couldn't actually install much software. Though, I'm
sure it's possible to install all the missing libraries via Microsoft's
website.

~~~
rbanffy
It's likely programs and libraries will refuse to work and complain they were
not designed to run under your operating system.

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VonGuard
Hey, that's enough to boot and run apps. Also, if you diddle the image with
one of MS's tools, you can jam a gui into it, in theory.

~~~
windsurfer
If that's the case, one could produce a tool that includes the image and
"patches" it after installation, creating a free GUIfied windows.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Could you install KDE4 on top - that might actually be a very good way to get
a clean KDE4 over MS Windows if it works;
<http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows>.

~~~
rbanffy
Great. You would get a KDE desktop without the Unix part on top of the
famously solid Windows kernel. What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Lol. I'm assuming someone wants to do it, someone working on KDE, ...

~~~
rbanffy
To be fair, you could put a Unix-like lipstick on Windows with Cygwin. It will
not change the underlying OS nature, but it will have lipstick on it.

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rbanffy
Why would anyone want to do this?

~~~
bonsaitree
I have no idea. Microsoft lost this former "solutions provider" (used to get
the monthly crate-o-CDs) in the mid-90s with the anti-developer trifecta of:

\- Executable registry entries

\- Baking-In IE into the O.S. w/o any native ability (pre hypervisors) to
concurrently run multiple versions for testing purposes

\- Re-Authorization/Re-Licensing for trivial hardware changes (the whole WGA
bullshit)

~~~
iigs
I've never heard of executable registry entries, and google is failing me when
I try to find them. Can you link me to something about them?

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javert
I run a Linux desktop but would like to be able to run Windows apps in a
Windows guest. I'm going to try to run this as a Windows guest and see if it
works (using VirtualBox).

~~~
mhansen
This isn't a guest environment of windows - this is a hypervisor - it runs on
the bare metal (using virtualization features on new CPUs), hosting other
operating systems.

This can't run windows apps as a windows guest.

