Virtualization Disallowed For Vista Home

Maxx writes to mention a ZDNet article about Microsoft's dictum on Vista as a virtual machine. The software giant has declared that home versions of their upcoming OS may not be run virtually, because 'virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption.' From the article: "'Microsoft says that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM. So, Microsoft removes user choice in the name of security,' says Gartner analyst Michael Silver. 'The other option is to pay Microsoft US$300 for Windows Vista Business or US$399 for Windows Ultimate, instead of US$200 for Home Basic or US$239 for Home Premium,' Silver suggested."

B.S.

[MobyDisk]

This will be impossible and they know it. There are plenty of companies who need to virtualize this OS for testing purposes. It wouldn't surprise me if MS did this internally. Meh, who cares though. Just another reason to use VMWare.

Because choice is bad

[A beautiful mind]

So where do you want to go today?

this makes my blood boil

[cyber1kenobi]

Microsoft just continues to prove that they don't get it. Virtualization is where it's at - if every home user had Windows running in a VM aka sandbox, and every time they shut off their box it went back to a clean snapshot... hey, we'd probably have a lot less bot nets out there ey?

Understanding

[mSparks43]

Microsoft says that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines
I dont understand, what risks?

It's all about the revenue.

[QuietLagoon]

Microsoft's stock has been floundering [yahoo.com] for these past few years since Windows 2000 came on the scene. Microsoft needs Vista to jump-start the amount of revenue they take in. Those who want to use virtualization more than likely will not need to features of versions above MS Vista Home, yet Microsoft is forcing those users to spend more than they want to or need to.

Sounds like bullshit...

[Lonewolf666]

Frokm the linked article:

A Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet Asia: "For production machines and everyday usage, virtualization is a fairly new technology and one that we think is not yet mature enough for broad consumer adoption."

[...]

Michael Silver, Gartner's research vice president, wrote on the analyst company's blog that like Windows rootkits, there is a risk that VM rootkits can be installed unbeknownst to the consumer.

"Microsoft says that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM," Silver said.

I call bullshit on both counts.

First, technology being immature has never stopped Microsoft before from selling it. And for protecting the consumer, a warning in the EULA would suffice. As in "Microsoft does not guarantee for correct function in a virtual environment". An outright prohibition points to other motives.

Second, unscrupulous makers of rootkits will hardly be stopped by an EULA, Mr. Silver.

Re:B.S.

[neoform]

*next week*

"Microsoft announces iTunes will be disabled on all copies of Vista, because it's a security risk that users doesn't understand."

(wow, as I wrote that, I got a creepy feeling.. that statement makes me think of all the trash that's come out of whitehouse press releases by Tony Snow)

Re:this makes my blood boil

[Threni]

> if every home user had Windows running in a VM aka sandbox, and every time they shut off their box it went back to a clean
> snapshot... hey, we'd probably have a lot less bot nets out there ey?

They'd have a lot fewer apps installed on their system too.

Translation....

[d3ac0n]

virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption

Translation: "We are getting SPANKED by VMWare in the virtualization market, and our PC virtualization sucks. So since we are unable to win against VMWare in the home market, we are taking our ball and going home."

Is anyone really surprised? Any market Microsoft cannot dominate they attempt to squash.

Re:Understanding

[GreatBunzinni]

I dont understand, what risks?

The same risks Microsoft tried to avoid by making it impossible to use WinXP home as a server: the risk of no one buying the "enterprisey" version of their OS and thus not shelving an extra 200$ per seat.

Re:Sick of moderation abuse

[arevos]

The parent is not Insightful, or anything close to it...it gets +5, Insightful for no other reason than that it conforms with the Slashdot groupthink.

You say this, and yet you do not back up your argument. Microsoft asserts that commercial virtualization systems are not mature enough for broad use, yet such systems have had far more real world use than Vista has had. If virtualization is immature, then by surely the same standards Vista must be too.

One could equally claim that you're conforming with anti-Slashdot groupthink, where people criticise the moderators when they mod up posts why don't personally agree with.

Re:B.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've bought a license to use a product, not the product itself, apparently."

yup. and if i don't have a windows partition, the only way i can use the product is with a VM.
this should be illegal.

looks familiar

[Andrei D]

Microsoft says that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM. So, Microsoft removes user choice in the name of security.
This just reminds me of the infamous quote:
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.
Once again Microsoft's attitude is an insult to its customers intelligence. Thank you Microsoft for letting us know that we are morons.

But it IS...

[hummassa]

It should have been +5 funny.

Some people here in /. (including me, sometimes) mod funny comments as insightful, especially if the comment is already negatively moderated (as offtopic, for instance). This is because a "+1, funny" won't increment the karma of the poster, but a "-1, offtopic" will decrement it. So, these moderations are done to give a funny poster a premium. I, personally, think that to fix this, "funny" mods should increment the poster's karma...

Re:Er?

[drsmithy]

This overlooks that plenty of companies need to _test_ on home edition as that may be (one) target environment.

For any company that _needs_ virtualisation for that purpose, the additional cost of an appropriate Vista licence is like pissing in the ocean.

Pay $200 more and you will understand the risks?

[iExcel]

Is Microsoft trying to say that if a normal consumer that doesn't appear to understand the risks running a VM will understand the risks after paying $200 for a higher edition of Vista? Does it mean that the more you pay the more you understand the VM technology?

Re:Understanding

[Zaatxe]

I dont understand, what risks?

The risk of the user circumventing DRM. In a virtual machine, your "sound board" may be sending everything played right to a .wav file, clean of DRM. Same for movies. And Microsoft don't want to give its customers the way to break the law!

Re:Translation....

[d3ac0n]

Your argument is flawed, as some versions of Vista can still be run in virtualisation.

Hmm...

You must have missed the part where I said "home market".

You see, like many computing trends, virtualization is beginning to make inroads in the home market from the Enterprise market. It started among IT types wanting to run several OSes but not wanting the complication of a dual-boot setup. Apple has greatly helped it along with it's "Parallels" software, and VMWare has a version of it's free VMWare Player for OSX.

My point was not regarding price discrimination, but the absurd manner in which Microsoft has chosen to explain away the price discrimination, by saying that virtualization is somehow not ready for broad adoption. This is patently absurd just on the face of it. Virtualization, while difficult to understand in concept, is laughably easy to use and implement. Unless you are using Microsoft's virtual PC product, which is difficult to use, ugly, and slow.

What they are really saying is that THIER Virtual PC product is not ready for broad adoption, and so they decided to take thier "ball" (virtualization for the cheaper versions of Vista) and go home. It's quite obvious that thier intent was to try and take away a potential market from one of thier competitors. They know they can't compete in the virtual PC space on the merits of thier product (especially among home users) so they just try to reduce or eliminate any competition in that space at all. It's really not that difficult to understand, and I'm saddened that I had to explain the obvious to a slashdotter.

Re:B.S.

[Andrew Kismet]

A reply to that would be "And if you don't have a computer, the only way you can use this product is by buying one. Should that be illegal too?"
More laws will not help. Microsoft can do whatever the hell they want with their own software and licensing.

Re:Foundering MS Stocks

[dsci]

Indeed. Another interesting snapshot is Comparison with Red Hat [yahoo.com].

Given the Novell deal, the attempted RH deal and other recent MS comments regarding Linux, I am beginning to buy into this whole "MS might be in trouble" arguement. I read about six months ago some issues with its market cap that point to a company not as financially secure as many people believe.

Re:Reasons why I'll be passing on Vista...

[somersault]

I don't like MS, but if any software I wrote was being heavily pirated, I'd probably want to do something about it.. product activation wouldn't really cut it these days I guess, as you can presumably just distribute already activated VM images?

Anti-Apple...again

[mabhatter654]

this is specifically to get at Apple user's pockets!!!

This is so prevent the runaway success that Parallels has become for all the intel mac users. By putting this in the license, and probably with some flimsy second-rate "protection" they make the Parallels be legally forced to play their little game or get a DMCA suit. That's the rub here...Microsoft can FORCE the issue and use police officers if they want. They want customers buying the "upgraded" versions. The worst possible thing that can happen is that developers will make extra sure their products work with Home for all the "Apple" users... and I think Microsoft is trying to put applications into requiring the higher version of windows to even RUN. If all the Apple users make home the default version Microsoft can't continue to shake businesses down.

Re:B.S.

[TheGavster]

The difference is that MS didn't spend extra effort making sure that Vista requires a PC to run. In this case, they *did* go to extra effort making the product less useful, by making it check if it's inside a VM.

Now, as a security feature, it would be nice if their magical "I'm in a VM" detector would pop up a warning, to prevent those virtualization attacks you hear about every so often where a rootkit takes over hypervisor capabilities.

Re:chiming in the other way (someone had to)

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, this article is about virtualization being disallowed in Vista Home, maybe your comment should mention that concept more than tangentially instead of just complaining about some non-specific aspect of the Slashdot consensus?

Re:What risks indeed..

[fireboy1919]

One actual, real, bonafide concern that comes to mind is the possibility of an exploit in the guest OS allowing it to escalate privileges.

Of course, you only have to worry about this if the main OS is captured, which is a lot more likely with something that's tied down badly. People in this thread are treating VMware like a possible security solution...what if it isn't ready for that yet?

Of course, I can't help but think that "Virtual Machines aren't ready" is MS's way of saying, "Our virtual machine product isn't ready and if we let everybody use someone else's we won't get dominance of this emerging market."

Re:Er?

[DarthBart]

Well, if you install a Microsoft product, you're pretty much guaranteed to get fucked one way or the other.

Bye bye Freedom 0

[littlem]

Freedom 0 [gnu.org]: the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Even this most basic freedom will now be denied to Dozers... Why do they stand for it?

Nonsense...

[urlgrey]

In that same vein, I'd also say most users don't understand the risks involved in email, either. Running Vista in a virtualized environment in the home may be just the thing for parents with young kids to help minimize the risks to their machine when the kids are cruising around online.

Give 'em a VPC of their own that can't have any data saved to it on reboot, and presto! you've created a way that helps keep the host OS reasonably secure from malware.

I know a lot of parents that would understand that concept.

Prohibiting this technology in the name of safety just doesn't make sense.

Re:What risks indeed..

[fireboy1919]

Because you're more likely to have multiple VMs on the same machine once you can.

All of a sudden, a security hole in Vista and in VMWare is an exploit in a Linux VM.

All OSes running on the same box are equally secure if there's an exploit in the VM management software.

That's only one issue. The other is in the idea that a VM is a sandbox - which it should be. If it is, then you can go ahead and give an untrusted user such a box, and if they screw it up, then they're the only ones who suffer. Obviously this is not the case in this new instance. This is probably the only situation you're thinking about. All the other possibilities for exploits are based around the fact that the user/administrator of the machine is trusted - so that an exploit of the guest OS is required before an exploit of the host OS.

The third possibility, and the one that deals with the wierd situation you seem to be thinking of setting up in your first question (there's only one VM for your VM server), presents the risk of privilege escalation without going through a Windows vulnerability at all. If, for example, there's an exploitable bug in the design of one of the externally viewable virtual devices you might get something like that.

You see the problems now?