Virtualization is not evil. It’s sarcastic.

Back in August during his LinuxCon keynote interview, Linus Torvalds proclaimed that “Virtualization is Evil.” I’m sorry to again disagree with the great Linus Torvalds, purveyor of truth, justice and the Linux way but alas, I do. Virtualization isn’t evil. It’s sarcastic. Sarcasm isn’t evil. And, I’m not being sarcastic when I say that.

Linus doesn’t like virtualization because it separates him from the hardware, which is why he built the Linux kernel in the first place. He wanted to “get his grubby hands” on things like I/O ports. Virtualization sarcastically denies the importance of the underlying hardware by abstracting it into a standard hardware subset. But, it isn’t evil. It’s not even mischievous. But, it’s plenty sarcastic.

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