On 1/10/08, D. Hageman <dhageman@dracken.com> wrote:
Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> On 1/10/08, *D. Hageman* <dhageman@dracken.com
> <mailto:dhageman@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.