Hello, Im decently new to Suse and Xen. I’ve managed to install a windows XP sp2 VM using OpenSuse 11 with the Xen HyperVisor that comes with it. Xp is running kind of slow though, from past experience with XenServer from novell there are tools you can install on the XP Vm that will install drivers needed to take advantage of the paravirtualization of Xen, thus making winXP run really fast. Do these drivers exist for OpenSuse’s Xen, if they do where can i get them?
The Novell tools you speak of are known as ‘Virtual Machine Driver Pack’ additions. It’s possible these drivers also work with Xen 3.2 on openSUSE 11 as SLES uses the same (patched) Xen version. ( NOVELL: Downloads ) - I haven’t tested this myself.
Other then that there are additions in development, have a look here XenWindowsGplPv - Xen Wiki
Do be careful how you use these GPL drivers as they are still developing them. Also here, I don’t have any experience with them myself (just yet)… (thanks to J. Pifer for this info )
P.s. If you are looking for a desktop virtualizer (e.g. run Windows as desktop OS next to and within Linux) VirtualBox would be a more fitting solution. Much easier to manage and also vmtools are included.
IMO : Xen, at this moment, is more a product to use in server virtualization… high end and less easy to manage and manipulate as desktop environment.
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