Virtualization

[Phil Thayer]

This scenario is one of the reasons that Virtualization has taken such a
strong hold.  It allows you to have a single machine and run multiple
development environments with different levels of OS and layered
products on a single H/W box.  What you want to do is perfect for
virtualization.  I have not personally used Xen but know a few people
that do and have no problem with it and in fact are thrilled with it.

I say go for it.

Phil

> Not being much of an Xen user, I thought I'd ask the
> list for input. I've been wanting to test out some
> newer applications and whatnot, but don't want to
> shake things up on my existing platform. I've
> considered multi-partitioning and multi-booting, but
> that would be disruptive in a multiuser set up as
> mine. I frequently have multiple X Sessions with
> different users running, so rebooting isn't a good
> solution. I've been wanting to load KDE4 and start
> experimenting on it and deciding when to roll it out
> to my "production" system. So I thought Xen or another
> virtual machine app might be a good choice. Does
> anyone currently run Xen, or are there others who have
> an opinion on how I can have a KDE4 desktop and other
> newest release software and latest kernel running on
> on of my X Sessions, and still have the stable
> production code on other's desktops? Separation of
> code is important here, but I want to be able to
> access the common /home and /root directories.
> 
> Brian