Free virtualization software for linux

VirtualBox application is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction; see "InnoTek" for more about our company.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows and Linux 32-bit hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while InnoTek ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

Enomalism Virtualized Management Console project is a open source web-based systems administrator management tool for XEN hypervisor. Servers with hundreds of multiple isolated virtualized systems can be managed like a standalone server.
Enomalism also includes a virtual server creation wizard and templates to facilitate virtualized server configuration, application deployment and centralized software patch management.
The Enomalism application provides a single interface for managing multiple virtualized servers across assorted platforms. The same administrator can monitor and administer both Linux and Windows servers using the same interface without having to learn extensive OS skills.
Enomalism eases cross-server and large server farm management. Applications can be deployed and updated on many servers simultaneously. The application console provides a centralized look at server information and software versions across all server resources, facilitating versioning and patch management.
Main features:
Enomalism Virtualized Control Center Console
- The Enomalism Control Center is a web-based tool for system administrators to perform many XEN server management tasks from any computer with appropriate Internet or network access.
- Dynamic Real-time Partitioning
- Partition a physical server into 100s of virtualized servers, each with full dedicated server functionality
Resource Management
- Assign and control system resource parameters and re-allocate resources in real-time via a rich web based interface
Virtualization
- Move virtual servers and its application(s) between physical servers transparently with near-zero downtime
Application Repository (package management system)
- Enomalism will feature a package management system & application repository to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages from the system(s).
Open Source License
- Enomalism is Open Source, and is released under an LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License)

Fedora Linux brings you a powerful Linux operating system which is built from open source software. The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives.

The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year, with a public release schedule.

The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in building Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than in past releases. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.

Major Features:

1. Support for the PowerPC (PPC) architecture.
2. GCC 4.0
3. GNOME 2.10
4. KDE 3.4 includes new accessibility features. You can manage these new features in KDS Control CenterRegional & AccessibilityAccessibility.
5. Native Eclipse 3.1M6 (part of a free Java stack)
6. MySQL 4.1
7. PHP 5.0
8. Xen 2 (virtualization to run multiple versions of an OS)
9. GFS 6.1-0.pre22 (cluster file system)
10. Evince 0.2.1 (universal document viewer)
11. GDM 2.6 Includes early login capability
12. SELinux This release includes coverage for 80 new daemons by the targeted policy. There are changes to the handling of Booleans. The targeted policy is enabled by default.

Libvirt is a C toolkit to interact with the virtualization capabilities of recent versions of Linux (and other OSes). It is free software available under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Virtualization of the Linux Operating System means the ability to run multiple instances of Operating Systems concurently on a single hardware system where the basic resources are driven by a Linux instance.
Libvirt aim at providing long term stable C API initially for the Xen paravirtualization but should be able to integrate other virtualization mechanisms if needed.
Enhancements:
- Support for secure remote access to nodes was added.
- Many bugfixes and documentation improvements were made.

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively.

More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine.

For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

In its current condition, it allows us to run the KNOPPIX Japanese Edition on Windows.

Sabayon Linux is a live DVD designed to transform a computer into a powerful Gentoo Linux system in less than 5 minutes.
Gentoo Linux is a Linux distribution powered by a software install manager engine called "Portage". Besides functioning as a live DVD, Sabayon Linux can also be installed on a hard disk, acting effectively as an easy-to-use Gentoo installation disk.
The live DVD includes a large range of desktop environments and open source software applications, such as KDE, GNOME, XFce, Fluxbox, KOffice, OpenOffice.org, FreeNX, amaroK, Kaffeine, etc.
Whats New in 3.4 Release:
- The most advanced: Linux Kernel 2.6.22 with extra Power Management (PowerTop), Wireless (mac80211), Ext4 Filesystem, Scheduler (CFS) and Virtualization (KVM,Virt-Manager,VirtualBox) support
- Gaming oriented: featuring,
- Savage 2
- FlightGear
- DangerDeep
- Warsow
- Nexuiz
- Torcs
- Battle of Wesnoth
- Latest NVIDIA (100.14.11) and AMD (8.38.6) GPU drivers
- The most Windows-aware: supporting NTFS in read/write and Wine Doors utility, that let you install Windows applications as easy as 1-2-3 (using Wine 0.9.40).
- The first to support Ext4 File System: for the braves, Sabayon Linux Installer can easily handle it.
- The most Stable Cutting Edge DVD: featuring Compiz Fusion and Metisse (Technology Preview) integration
- Much more flexible: the Installer now features a really improved execution speed, RAID10 support, Ext4 Support, UUID device naming support, a Packages Selector, a Boot Services Selector and also a Core/Minimal Install Method (Server deployments)
- The Most Laptop Aware: tested and optimized also for Laptop usage
- X.Org 7.3 with automatic Monitor configuration
- KDE 3.5.7
- GNOME 2.18.2
- Strong identity: no Server applications installed (you will find them in the Business Edition)
- Less Duplicated Packages: removed about 140 duplicated applications
- Better Mactel support: added support for Intel ICH8M, Atheros Wireless cards, Backlight management and new Synaptics touchpads
- Better Out of the Box hardware support: Agere et131x,
- VMware Guest Installation Support
- Media Center capabilities: featuring GeeXbox 1.1 and Elisa Media Center (Technology Preview)
- Incredible set of installed and preconfigured Applications (see Packages List below)
- The most tested Stable Release: in the last 4 months, our Core Beta Team have done a great work to accomply our always growing QA standards. This transformed Sabayon Linux 3.4 in the most reliable version ever released.
Enhancements:
- We are happy to announce Sabayon Linux 3.4 Revision E. Distribution updates: introduced a (teaser) pre-alpha release of the Entropy stack (Equo application); updated Portato to 0.8.0; updated Compiz Fusion to work with XGL and AMD/ATI cards; updated WINE to 0.9.42 and fixed Wine Doors; re-introduced sudo after install; updated Second Life to 1.18.0.6; fixed partitioning issues on some system caused by dmraid stack (disabled by default now); re-introduced old and stable ipw3945 driver; updated pommed to 1.7 (better MacBook support); re-introduced old bcm43xx wireless driver.

Rails Live CD project was born on Ezra Zygmuntowicz blog and realized with help from Brian Ketelsen. Rails Live CD is based on PCLinuxOS which is a great Linux distribution for creating LiveCDs. More information at PCLinusOS.com
To use it, just download, burn and reboot! Or if you have a virtualization or emulation engine like Qemu, Parallels or VMWare it is even easier.
Many people are curious about Ruby on Rails but dont want to go through the pain of installing it locally. The Rails Live CD solves this problem by allowing you to have a fully operating Ruby on Rails development environment without even touching your hard drive!
Others are interested in developing Ruby on Rails applications in Linux but dont have the skills or the patience to do the installation and compiling required to get Ruby on Rails running on a typical Linux installation.
Rails Live CD allows you to install directly to your hard drive and walks you through the process. No compiling or ./configure ./make ./make install dancing required.
Enhancements:
- Rails 1.1.16
- RadRails 0.7.1
- jEdit
- emacs
- Subversion
- MySQL 5 & MySQL Administrator
- SQLite
- PostgreSQL 8
- Firefox 1.5 with several web development extensions
- Gems : ZenTest, Rake, Rails, OpenID, Mogrel, Capistrano
- KDevelop, Kate
- TightVNC