[lug] Advice on Xen

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:14:05 -0700
pjr at ucar.edu (pjr) wrote:

> I just got a new machine with a dual core VT compatible chip.
> 
> I still need a few M$oft compatible products (hate to admit it) that
> dont do well under wine, and I need complete compatibility. I have
> read a bit about Xen, but there are things I am not clear about.
> Perhaps one of you know the answers or can point me to a good place
> to learn more.
> 
> If there is hardware not easily supported by linux (lets say a
> wireless card, fingerprint reader or DVI output from the graphics
> card), can the guest OS (lets say XP) still use those hardware
> components even if dom0 running linux cannot?

Not usually. Sometimes you can pass thru things like usb, but typically
if Linux doesn't know how to deal with a device on the host, the guests
can't use it either. 

> Is there any modern (last 6 months) comparison of tradeoffs in the
> various virtualization technologies? I am thinking of Xen, Virtualbox,
> Parallels, etc. I can find older comparisons, but nothing recent.

Not sure how up to date it is, but: 
http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison

> Also, how about tradeoffs between running windows as the host and
> linux the guest, or vice versa? I wonder whether it will make much
> difference to me which is which. 95% of my work will be using linux
> tools, but can't live without those last 5%.

Well, I don't run any windows at all here, so I can't really say which
has better support. You may just want to try both ways out and see
which suits your needs better. 

Also, I will stick in a plug for libvirt ( http://libvirt.org/ ) and
KVM ( http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki ).

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Fedora8VirtQuickStart

> Thanks for any advice you have
> 
> Phil

kevin

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