I heard about something that is quite cool today, at least if you are a geek. This will sound a bit like an advertisement, but I can assure you it’s just my uninfluenced ramblings about how great I think this product is.
Anyone who has been paying attention lately to tech issues knows the virtualization is really “hot” right now. It’s all about providing a layer of abstraction so that you can build something that will run on a variety of platforms exactly the same way.
rPath is a company that offers you the ability (for free) to create an account and use their web based system to build your own virtual machine. You pick the packages / applications you want installed, and it will build a custom trimmed down Linux installation which includes only those packages. Then you (optionally) add your own software and other customizations, and package it all up. You can then download the generated images (in a variety of formats, Xen and other VM systems as well as raw hard drive images or tar files) for installation anywhere. They also host the images for you, all for free.
If you want more info, check out their flash demo on their pages. It’s more focused on packaging software applications for distribution, and doesn’t go into many of the techie details, but what’s really happening behind the scenes is actually pretty cool.
4 Comments
parallels?
Not that I know of currently, but in the interview I heard they said they were either planning it or already had it ready, as well as Virtual PC.
Actually, we’ve supported Parallels for a long time - using the HDD format we build. Turns out, a Parallels virtual disk is just a standard HDD image.
I run Parallels on my Mac at home and happily use rPath based appliances.
Excellent