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