VMware users -- takeover by Broadcom

jimbo45 · Jul 20, 2023

Not sure what this means for VMware users as Broadcom makes chips etc for modems, network cards etc. They aren't a software company of any size. I saw in the London Times that the 61 Billion dollar deal is going ahead -- I had a few shares in the company and got 142.50 USD for the 10 shares I held when the take over was proposed on May 22 -- nice gain of 49%. If you day trade you have to act quickly (@TraderGary !!!)

Although I stopped using VMware products quite a while ago - relying on HYPER-V for Windows Hosts and KVM/QEMU for Linux hosts. I see also that there's an 8 billion dollar debt associated with VMware associated with this transaction - so IMO the outlook for VMware is not very good. HYPER-V now most of the bugs are out of it performs excellently as well as does KVM/QEMU and both are free so I can't see loads paying for VMware products as contracts come to an end - especially with Ms and Amazon both offering excellent robust cloud services for businesses - and IBM (now owners of RedHat) supplying a huge array of business consultancy services. I might have got this totally wrong but I really can't see a decent long term future now for VMware. And it's last few releases of the worstation product were very flakey to say the least when trying to run the latest W11 insider builds on them.

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus · Jul 20, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Not sure what this means for VMware users as Broadcom makes chips etc for modems, network cards etc. They aren't a software company of any size. I saw in the London Times that the 61 Billion dollar deal is going ahead -- I had a few shares in the company and got 142.50 USD for the 10 shares I held when the take over was proposed on May 22 -- nice gain of 49%. If you day trade you have to act quickly (@TraderGary !!!)

Although I stopped using VMware products quite a while ago - relying on HYPER-V for Windows Hosts and KVM/QEMU for Linux hosts. I see also that there's an 8 billion dollar debt associated with VMware associated with this transaction - so IMO the outlook for VMware is not very good. HYPER-V now most of the bugs are out of it performs excellently as well as does KVM/QEMU and both are free so I can't see loads paying for VMware products as contracts come to an end - especially with Ms and Amazon both offering excellent robust cloud services for businesses - and IBM (now owners of RedHat) supplying a huge array of business consultancy services. I might have got this totally wrong but I really can't see a decent long term future now for VMware. And it's last few releases of the worstation product were very flakey to say the least when trying to run the latest W11 insider builds on them.

Cheers
jimbo

VMware is targeted at corporate market. I would say they will ditch free versions as is becoming trend for any major tool.

jimbo45 · Jul 21, 2023

cereberus said:
VMware is targeted at corporate market. I would say they will ditch free versions as is becoming trend for any major tool.

Hi there.

Fortunately there's a load of free stuff on "Other OS'es" that will stay Free. For example if you need a decent fast spreadsheet without installing a whole load of "Office clones" and can read handle ms office xlsx files gnumeric is good -- excellent if you don't need real complex things - probably good enough for 90% of spreadsheet users.

If some of the software companies got a bit more involved with Open Source many products would be better more user friendly and remain free - being a good test ground for their chargeable software to business etc. If IBM embrace this with Red Hat server software etc and the Fedora project and other companies too get involved its win win for everybody. Of course some things should remain proprietary but things like OS and data backups should really be part of any OS even if 3rd party tools are better -- As for the Windows "Backup" thing -- how can a multi billion (or as it like Apple reached a Trillion dollars yet) company like Ms come up with such a junk useless program !!!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

pparks1 · Jul 21, 2023

jimbo45 said:
If IBM embrace this with Red Hat server software etc and the Fedora project and other companies too get involved its win win for everybody.

Well, IBM who now owns RedHat, and RedHat has axed CentOS as a long term supported downtream client, and then decided to stop providing their source RPM's for their RHEL products to the public and only to paying customers and limiting their ability to use source code to recompile their own distros, IMHO isn't really embracing the entire point of the entire open source movement.

They are really just trying to limit and stop other enterprise systems, like Alma LInux, Oracle linux, and Rocky Linux. What they fail to see is that these freely available RHEL based clones are used by developers and the open source community to develop apps and contribute to the open source community with tools and software which include support for the RHEL product. And IT people use these freely available RHEL Clones to learn, study and certify on the RedHat Platform so they can best support RedHat in the enterprise.

If you are RedHat and you take Alma Linux or Rocky Linux away from the community, a lot of enterprises aren't going to just say, "oh well, I guess we need to just pay RedHat now". A lot will say, "you know what, I don't like what RH is doing here, what are the alterative OS's that we can run our enterprise on which doesn't put a stranglehold on the open source community.

As a long term RedHat,CentOS,Rocky Linux systems admin (almost 25 years), i'm playing around with other distros like Debian and such to find something that I can embrace as much as I have RedHat based distros over the years.

On the VMWare front, enterprise customers are certainly the bread/butter for VMWare. Our organization heavily leverages VMWare VSphere as our Hypervisor platform, and we are also using the VMWare NSX Load balancing platform for our load balancing needs. We aren't alone.

Hopachi · Jul 24, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Not sure what this means for VMware users as Broadcom makes chips etc for modems, network cards etc. They aren't a software company of any size.

Sounded weird when I first heard it.

But there's an interesting combination. Broadcom also makes ARM processors.
There might be a big move for VMware on ARM hardware. At the moment there are solid hypervisor solutions on x86 but the ARM side needs a lot of work.

martyfelker · Jul 25, 2023

VMware has launched Technical Preview 2023, which I have installed on Debian (my secondary OS to Manjaro. Installed Mageia 9 rc1 and it is working perfectly. No Canaary Build - maybe tomorrow.

jimbo45 · Jul 26, 2023

pparks1 said:
Well, IBM who now owns RedHat, and RedHat has axed CentOS as a long term supported downtream client, and then decided to stop providing their source RPM's for their RHEL products to the public and only to paying customers and limiting their ability to use source code to recompile their own distros, IMHO isn't really embracing the entire point of the entire open source movement.

They are really just trying to limit and stop other enterprise systems, like Alma LInux, Oracle linux, and Rocky Linux. What they fail to see is that these freely available RHEL based clones are used by developers and the open source community to develop apps and contribute to the open source community with tools and software which include support for the RHEL product. And IT people use these freely available RHEL Clones to learn, study and certify on the RedHat Platform so they can best support RedHat in the enterprise.

If you are RedHat and you take Alma Linux or Rocky Linux away from the community, a lot of enterprises aren't going to just say, "oh well, I guess we need to just pay RedHat now". A lot will say, "you know what, I don't like what RH is doing here, what are the alterative OS's that we can run our enterprise on which doesn't put a stranglehold on the open source community.

As a long term RedHat,CentOS,Rocky Linux systems admin (almost 25 years), i'm playing around with other distros like Debian and such to find something that I can embrace as much as I have RedHat based distros over the years.

On the VMWare front, enterprise customers are certainly the bread/butter for VMWare. Our organization heavily leverages VMWare VSphere as our Hypervisor platform, and we are also using the VMWare NSX Load balancing platform for our load balancing needs. We aren't alone.

For enterprises etc Debian is still as solid as a rock --and the stable branch is almost impossible to break. I run on my laptop Arch Linux because I like to try some "leading edge stuff" - but when doing a lot of testing with php, docker, containers , mysql etc I do it first on a debian system (debian 12 is current and the kernel is 6.1 which is not too far behind the current latest development one of 6.4.x ) with the "minimal kde gui" installed (a laptop test machine needs a gui and I like kde -- just the base desktop with a few apps only such as a konsole, web browser, file editor (nano is ok for editing system configs etc but for developememt you need a wygiwyse editor like kate / kwrite etc) .

Debian has been around for years so isn't likely to mushroom and disappear like so many other distros. RockyLinux - could be good for ex Centos users -- one will just have to see. I don't like ubuntu mainly because I don't like Canonical (owners) and the way you are almost forced to use things I hate such as snap and flatpak.

Very happy with this debian testing laptop (old laptop which won't run natively W11 without "get arounds" (CPU too old but runs VM's perfectly.)

Cheers
jimbo

martyfelker · Jul 26, 2023

I run Debian 12 on the SSD that used to contain Windows 11 - it is very stable but so is Manjaro. Have not yet been able to boot kernel 6.5 but do have the latest stable kernel 6.5.6 which is very stable.