New Xen Linux Distribution

f5hacka writes "Four students at Clarkson University developed a new linux distribution based on the Xen kernel. The distribution is called Xenophilia. Xenophilia is a derivative of Debian Linux and uses the new Debian installer to install its packages. Its homepage is available at http://cosi.clarkson.edu/xen/. The distribution is available for download at http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/xenop hilia/"

Comments

Re:Read the *other* fine article.

[hankaholic]

If you RTFA on the 'Xen' kernel, you'd see what's news. The Xen kernel supports some Nifty Virtual Machine Stuff which you won't find in a standard kernel

Bzzt. There is no mention of the "Xen kernel" in the articles cited, so it's unclear as to which Fucking Article you're talking about.

chet@chet:~$ links -dump http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ | grep -i kernel
chet@chet:~$ links -dump http://cosi.clarkson.edu/xen/ | grep -i kernel
chet@chet:~$

Xen is a layer which allows the user to boot multiple operating systems at the same time. It happens to include modifications to the Linux kernel which allow the user to do virtualization stuff that may seem "New and Cool" to the average X86 user who hasn't heard of virtual machines, but is more like "Old and Busted" for those who've heard of IBM outside of the SCO case.

According to some article sponsored by IBM:

"Since 1972, VM has been providing the capabilities to "virtualize" the complete S/370, S/390, and zSeries architecture allowing a single physical processor to run multiple guest operating system [sic] simultaneously with each guest thinking it has complete control of the system. Historically, MVS and VSE the operating systems most likely to be run as VM guests, but now with the increasing role of Linux in the data center, it is becoming a popular VM guest system as well."

More informative than the links provided is the Xen user documentation, especially sections 2.3.3, 2.4.1, and most of 3.

A good start for reading about the history of VM would be to Google for "IBM VM".

Re:Read the *other* fine article.

[JabberWokky]

Consider yourself aware. It's one of the big point features for the version of SUSE that just came out.

--
Evan

... or NetBSD

[hubertf]

Why yet another distribution when everyone's favourite operating system already works, even on Xen - ``Of course it runs NetBSD!'' :)

Some links:
* What does Xen look like - a screenshot:
http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/in-Action/hubertf-xe n.png
* Installation:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/xen/howto.html
* General information on NetBSD/Xen:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/xen/
* Live CD with Debian, NetBSD and FreeBSD:
http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050421_004 1
* Benchmarking:
http://www.iki.fi/kuparine/comp/xendom0/xendom0.ht ml

- Hubert