Virtualization

[Jason D. Clinton]

On 1/10/08, D. Hageman <dhageman at dracken.com> wrote:
>
> Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> > On 1/10/08, *D. Hageman* <dhageman at dracken.com
> > <mailto:dhageman at dracken.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Xen was merged into the mainstream kernel last July(ish).
> >
> > Xen as a guest support is mainline but for i386 only (useless on modern
> > hardware in a datacenter) with 2.6.23 being the first release of this.
> > The hypervisor stuff is still thoroughly intrusive and unlikely to go in
> > any time soon.
>
> My understanding is the original poster wanted a separate environment to
> work with KDE4.  Do you really think they are a) running in a datacenter


I'm making the point that 2.6.23's token Xen guest support is useless and
that Xen--in general--is still considered somewhat unstable making it an
unattractive choice *even* in the datacenter where Xen has the biggest
use-case. If you need binary-only drivers for NVidia graphics and wireless
devices, like on a desktop/lappy, it's even *more* unattractive.


or b) running something other then x86 hardware?


Who are you going to buy a CPU from in the last year that isn't x86_64? And
what person who uses Xen in a datacenter (my point of reference for the
ideal Xen user) environment isn't going to run x86_64 Linux on their
hardware?


>     If the distro you use comes with Xen and management tools for Xen then
> >     that is probably the best option.
> >
> > All the distros with Xen hosting support are providing special kernels
> > that have the giant patch sets applied to them.
>
> I won't argue this point.  I will say this: if the distro is confident
> enough to ship the software and is willing to support it with updates,
> then it is better to stick with what your distro supports then start
> mucking with your config and turn your machine into a "non-standard"
> box.  I see quite a few people have trouble with linux because they
> start with a nicely built distro and the first thing they do is start
> pulling out tarballs of source and compiling software to install.


I completely agree. My simple point is that Xen is what it is: not quite
there yet. You might have better luck with something far less complicated
like KVM.
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