Microsoft Present For Linux: Free Code For Drivers
In an attempt to improve the interoperability between Windows operating system and Linux open source platform, Microsoft has released under the terms of GPL 2 license, 20000 lines of code corresponding to three Linux device drivers. This is the first time when Microsoft provides codes for device drivers directly to the Linux kernel community for the inclusion in the Linux tree.
Sam Ramji, senior director of Platform Strategy in Microsoft’s Server and Tools organization, motivates why Microsoft has released the Linux device drivers code: ” We are hearing more and more customers and open source partners telling us they see some of their best value when they deploy new open source software solutions on top of existing Microsoft platforms. Today’s release would have been unheard of from Microsoft a few years ago, but it’s a prime example that customer demand is a powerful catalyst for change.”
The main target of the Linux device drivers code is to enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V:
“The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels.”, explained Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft OSTC (Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center).
Microsoft has been involved in working with open source communities in the past. For example, PHP 5.3 based applications were optimized for Windows and jQuery Java Script Library was included in Visual Studio 2008, making easier for developers to manage HTML elements.
The advantages of these new Linux device drivers for Microsoft customers are obvious: they will be able to reduce the complexity of their current infrastructure, by deploying Linux and Windows servers on the same virtualization platform.
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