xen

[scrarfussi]

on my grub menu i have
opensuse 10.2
linux (/dev/hda6) mandriva
windows
failsafe -opensuse 10.2
Xen

now i've heard xen is virtualization can someone tell me how it works can i try out other distros with it what do i need thanx

[gogalthorp]

You must have initialized Xen in Yast at some point.

If you want to play with VM (Virtual Machines) It is much easier to download VMware Server. ( free download ) Very slick GUI interface. You can copy and paste between the guest and host OS's. It does not have all the bells and whistles of the commercial products but is totally usable. I run XP in VMware and I always get a kick out of seeing Windows boot in a Linux Window. Note VMware does not support 3d Acceleration in a guest so playing high end games is out. But all other windows activities work great. Note You can probably run XP on Suse in 512 meg at min but you will get lots of disk thrashing as things are chained in and out of memory. With 2 gig it is like running two computers in one. No lag or slow down. You will need to have the Kernel-Source installed and the gcc compiler.

VMware: Virtualization, Virtual Machine & Virtual Server Consolidation - VMware

Instructions on setting up Xen seem to be a little sparse.

[pavlo_7]

on my grub menu i have
opensuse 10.2
linux (/dev/hda6) mandriva
windows
failsafe -opensuse 10.2
Xen

now i've heard xen is virtualization can someone tell me how it works can i try out other distros with it what do i need thanx

Xen is a modified Linux kernel that includes a thin layer of software called hypervisor which is used to manage communication between virtual OS and the hardware. A better description is here: What is Xen, and Why is it cool?

Normally, you would need xen kernel installed along with some other tools to manage (install/start/reboot/shutdown, etc.) virtual OS(s). Some Linux distributions offer this kernel as optional (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, SUSE). You can install both Windows and Linux as virtual OS.
CentOS 5, for example, has built-in option to use xen kernel (choose "Virtualization" while installing the OS).

Just keep in mind that XEN is not the only virtualization solution out there. There are also VMware, Parallels, Virtuozzo and others.

The KVM/QEMU is yet another virtualization solution (similar to XEN) that I would recommend to try.