[lug] Advice on Xen

[Hugh Brown]

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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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%.
> 
> Thanks for any advice you have
> 
> Phil
> 


If your primary goal is to get Windows working on a linux host, I'd go 
with VMware Server.  Parallels is a product for Mac OSX (though VMware 
just came out with Fusion).

I was at a vmware dog and pony and they said that Xen does well with CPU 
intensive loads but that they do better with I/O loads (and then they 
proceeded to say that everything is I/O intensive and should use them).

Hugh