VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

From Slashdot:

http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.p.../02/25/1854218

Wow... I don't think we'll ever see it though...

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

The video is interesting:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/609997/video-...s-on-one-phone

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

This looks AMAZING.
I'd buy such software right now...

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

/me too..
because of a program, thats only available for WinMob... GRRRR

;-)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

OMG (ok teen girl mode off now)!

That is stunning - we use VMware at work, and it is one of the greatest things out for years and years. This takes it to a new level.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Something is wrong with that n800, it seems fast even though it runs two OS at once. :(

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

It probably has no Python apps running.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I'm with Kozzi. That seemed suspiciously fast.

I suspect trickery... Look at the last screen in the video, where the earth is spinning in Android. The screen is refreshing strangely; there's some kind of brief flash every so often. Perhaps there's more VNC than VMWare in that N800.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I don't expect VMWare to use cheap tricks to promote their software. That will cost them dearly if ever someone finds out.

Last November VMWare acquired a small french company called Trango Virtual Processors. Here's an old article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11...irtualization/

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

This would be awesome! I have money to buy this as a beta now.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I'd rather see VMWare on an N800/N810, running Maemo and Android simultaneously.

And, more than that, I'd rather see an N97 doing it. That would be quite cool.

(as long as I'm dreaming... an N97 scaled up to N810 screen size, 5 row keyboard, dpad and android's 5 buttons on the face, dual SIM slots, quadband GSM, able to do both AT&T and T-Mobile 3G, long battery life, and running Maemo and Android)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

It's not clear to me what VMWare is running on. Is it good ol' Maemo 4.1 or what?

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

When VMware says "bare metal solution" they are referring to their own highly customized and trimmed down version of Linux. It is the "hypervisor" and runs directly on the hardware. No other OS running beneath it, just like their ESX product. It would have to be flashed into the unit.

As to the flickering in the screen, that is probably the video driver trying to share the display as CE tries to replot at the same time the globe is spinning. I would expect video to suffer if both screens are displaying simultaneously. (then again, that is an alpha release driver, no doubt)

As to the demo itself, you will note that the CE machine is basically doing extremely little (as noted by the CPU meters). I'd guess that spinning that globe was sucking down almost all the CPU time (again, as noted by the CPU meter).

I'm pretty sure they're targeting this as more of a switching mechanism, but with the side benefit that the "background" OS can still continue to process ... but at a degraded speed.

On the other hand, I know VMware, and as soon as you stop doing CPU intensive tasks on the "foreground" OS, the "background" OS will start taking as many cycles as you let loose of, if it needs them. VMware does the CPU load balancing, so this is not fakery, just some very good and fast low-level programming by VMware.

Ken

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

holy crap this is amazing, this puts the software library way up with the n8*0 devices. now we can play wince games :D

Another video

http://vimeo.com/3363448

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Lol, I like how the only application they run is solitaire and "the globe."

And how are drivers going to work? GPU does not even work on desktop VMWare yet...

And the N800 has a 400mhz cpu


But, I am excited for the future.



(Ironic how they did not use Maemo... Looks like Nokia made a great hardware product, but epic failed on the software)

(just kidding, please don't kill me)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

maybe with this we could have some decent alternative gps software to use on the n810

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Lets not forget this software is not targeted at the end user.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

What? From what I see, the whole point is that you can run your "business OS" with your "personal OS". Obviously they are not going to give us the software like on the desktop, but it is still targeted to the end user.

IMO, why the hell would you need a separate OS for business and personal, unless you are very concerned about security.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I mean the end user won't have the possibility to control it, hell he won't even know it's there...

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Impressive feat by VMWare. I'd say they purposefully ommited Symbian and/or Maemo just to not bug Nokia about this. I'd pay right now to run Linux on my Symbian S60 phone.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

qole,

that flash is very reminiscent of the glitches liqbase encounters on some machines on first run.
My bet, they would stop if you closed down vmware and restarted :D

I kept saying it was deep in hardware ;)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

After watching the video, I think VMware is being a bit deceptive. She implies that this is VMware running on a mobile phone, and multitasking other mobile phone OS's. Most people will watch it and see a Nokia device and believe it is a phone. If they'd demo'd this on an N95, then the video would be more honest.

(But, it's still great for us. I love VMware on my laptop.)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

OK, so if this is real, and guys who are more in-the-know than I'll ever be say it probably is, then... I want it. So much it hurts. ;)

It is at this point that a guy working for VMWare should show up on these forums and post a download link for us all to try.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

jyro may be the closest we have to that.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

yes i agree if this really is out there give us a download and make this sofware a sucess we will test it for you and hey it has to be free

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Virtualization of 2 mini os's have been done by Xen on ARM more than 8 months ago.
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenARM

document here
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Xe...Guide_v1+0.pdf

Now that we see that VMWare has jumped on the same platform it is wonderful news, though I doubt there will be a significant release till at least the end of year.

Virtual playgrounds are always nice :)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

/me likes playgrounds.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

You mean the guy who did the cool inkface stuff?

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Good grief no. Commercial is fine! I'd prefer support + a product lifespan instead of abandonment ("I'm busy with my real job") and platitudes ("At least it's free!").

If you want developers to sink time into your platform, you have to make it worth their while. For a big player like VMWare, being popular in the forum isn't enough.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

So, go to the VMware web site, follow the links (mobile VM) and sign up for more information. They'll probably contact you, then you can state your desire to beta-test for them (assuming the N8x0 is a viable platform for a production version...it may well just have been a test bed for demo purposes only. The stated goal is to use this in phones, anyway).

Why does it have to be free?

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I believe that's the same guy, yes. Anyway, jyro used to work for VMware.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

ok i will pay for it i dont have a problem with that

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

why not boot something interesting - amiga workbench with hd-games installed ;)

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Because Amiga isn't ARM-based. This is virtualisation, not emulation.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Amiga was 68k, I thought ARM was 68k on super steroids?

Not necessarily compatible, but certainly the same family.

rose tinted glasses, i fail!

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Well, the N800 is using the standard cell phone parts, so I would consider it a cell phone.

I believe the used the N800 because its cheap, has open hardware, and has that huge screen we all love.

But you know what is the BEST part of all this? If the VM solution could run on a lot of hardware, then any phone could run any operating system. As long as the VM supports it of course.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

See above regarding emulation versus virtualization.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

I'm not liking this:
"With this transition to open operating systems, protection of trusted services such as digital rights management, authentication, billing, etc. is becoming an increasing concern. VMware MVP allows vendors to isolate these important trusted services from the open operating system and run them in isolated and tamper-proof virtual machines so that even if the open environment is compromised, the trusted services are not impacted."

That said, if they give me Linux on a phone, period, at least that's a step in the right direction, and they'll hopefully eventually realize that DRM is a bad idea.
Personally, if this worked, and worked well, I would pay good money for it. Free is good, but not necessary. Come to think of it, though, I would expect that this would be marketed to handset manufacturers, which means they might well release a free, personal-use edition, even if it is normally commercial. VMWare seems to favour that approach with their other products.

Re: VMWare on N800: Windows CE and Android Running
 

Ahhh, good point. VMWare is offering a better jail than the one Apple uses (which, as far as I understand, is just a chroot). VMWare is suggesting that will be much more difficult to jailbreak a phone that uses their VM technology. I can see what they're saying; if they encrypt the image file that the OS is in, and then make it so only their VM can unlock the image and run the OS, it will be much tougher to hack the OS.