Linux Gains Two New Virtualization Solutions

An anonymous reader writes "The upcoming 2.6.23 kernel has gained two new virtualization solutions. According to KernelTrap, both Xen and lguest have been merged into the mainline kernel. These two virtualization solutions join the already merged KVM, offering Linux multiple ways to run multiple virtual machines each running their own OS."

Comments

Re:Why?

[realdodgeman]

In what way are hardware drivers similar to VM technologies?

More VMs does not necessarily give more OS support. I can understand the need for a VM like lguest, since it does not require a CPU with virtualization technology. But wouldn't it benefit the user more if this where intigrated into KVM instead? I don't know how possible this is, but it sure would do my choice a lot easier.

Re:lguest doesn't need VT

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, I have recently played with a variety of VM systems. VMware Server is slow but it works really well - and it is free. So if you want a production quality solution, use that. Qemu can be sped up enormously if you can get the kernel optimizations compiled and installed. However, Qemu (Virtualbox is based on it) doesn't work with everything - for example I found that MS Windows 2003 would crash after an hour or so. The other solutions such as Xen require special processors.

Yes, VMware Server and basic Qemu are slow, but they are nevertheless quite usable and you can speed things up by toning down the requirements in Windows - select classic mode and 16 bit colour with no animations for example, just like one would do for VNC. I did my tax return on a 1.6GHz laptop using Qemu (without the optimizations) and WinXP and it was OK.

I wasn't aware of Iguest, so I'm going to give it a try.