vmware Now that VMWare Workstation and Fusion Pro are free will we see better FreeBSD support?

tuaris

tuaris

As the title suggests.

While FreeBSD guests in console mode and basic 2D graphics works just fine, it's 3D acceleration that has been neglected. I always believed the reason why is because few FreeBSD users/developers adopted it due it having been a paid product for almost 25 years.

Now that all the VMWare desktop virtualization products are free for personal use, that might allow some FreeBSD developers to experiment with it more. Perhaps one day we'll see renewed interest in fixing/re-adding drm-kmod support for the vmwgfx driver. Then an even more wild idea... FreeBSD as a host for VMWare Workstation?
 
I'll be the first person to always select and advocate for free and open source software above all else, but that is not always possible in all instances. VMWare Workstation is an exceptional piece of software that (in my experience) has been unmatched by anything else. I really do emphasize, it is exceptional.

I have used VirtualBox. It's good, but not great on the same level as VMWare. As for vm-bhyve, I have high hopes for it. It's an amazing technology especially when paired with ZFS (Also.. "bhyve" is an excellent and very clever name). As of this moment it's got no where near the capabilities of a desktop hypervisor. I wouldn't put it in the same category in it's current state.

In a related note. I have been giving a lot of thought towards building a web UI for bhyve to manage it, one that is similar to vSphere vCenter. Unfortunately there are certain C API's that are currently lacking for ZFS that allow such a thing to be possible. I also don't fully know what the situation is for the C APIs in bhyve are, but from my limited research they might be in a better state. The idea is that I do not want my PHP code to become nothing more than an "executes and parse" for CLI commands. I want to build an actual PHP extension (or a REST API with https://babelouest.github.io/ulfius/) that integrates with the system using the respective C libraries for ZFS and bhyve. Then of course there is my extremely limited knowledge on systems programming, but that hasn't stopped me yet .
 
tuaris said:
I'll be the first person to always select and advocate for free and open source software above all else, but that is not always possible in all instances. VMWare Workstation is an exceptional piece of software that (in my experience) has been unmatched by anything else. I really do emphasize, it is exceptional.
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Parallels is pretty slick, too. But it is macOS only.
 
Bhyve, with ZFS and jails combined form a fundamental FreeBSD technological advancement, even though all were invented quite some time ago. Improving its leverage by advancing its parts and integration could prove a significant spearpoint for FreeBSD and "selling point".

tuaris said:
In a related note. I have been giving a lot of thought towards building a web UI for bhyve (similar to vSphere) to manage it. Unfortunately there are certain C API's that are currently lacking for ZFS that allow such a thing to be possible. I also don't know what the state is for the C APIs in bhyve, but last I checked this might be in a better state.
Click to expand...
If you feel that there are certain structures/API's lacking in bhyve that will enable or facilitate building applications for it, be it GUI or non-GUI, please consider following or contributing to Enterprise Working Group - bhyve+jails manageability work stream
 
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