running Xen kernel: unclear of the concept

Hi,

I want to use Xen on my desktop so I can run an instance of Windows 7 without dual-booting. Ideally, I just want a single openSUSE install as my main desktop system, and also have a Windows 7 VM.

Once I boot into the Xen kernel, can I then treat that as my main desktop install? or is it strictly a hypervisor for any virtual machines that I would then use and maintain? If the latter is the case, I guess I would need to create both a Windows 7 vm and an openSUSE vm, but I’m hoping I don’t have to run my main openSUSE desktop as a vm.

Does my question make sense? Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Craig