On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 08:19:47PM +0100, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo wrote: > I'm about to set up a new laptop with NetBSD, and I'd really like to > be able to run Xen on it, in order to experiment with a couple of > Linux distributions without resorting to rebooting back and forth > between operating systems. What I don't fully understand, is what > limitations NetBSD/xen will have. > > As far as I can tell from what I read here, and on the Xen pages, I > should be able to install NetBSD/i386 2.0, and then add Xen 1.2 to > that, using the existing NetBSD installation (with a new kernel) in > domain 0. Yes, though the chipset your laptop has will be somewhat important (pciide controller, network card, etc). > What I don't understand is whether I'll still be able to use the > various hardware in the laptop: will NetBSD/xen in domain 0 support > all the same devices that NetBSD/i386 does? Can I expect to run X? Yes (for the OS running in dom0). > Use the Atheros wireless device? No (this may potentially get better with full support for xen2?) > Power management? No. Also missing, and relevant to laptops: cardbus/pcmcia and usb Xen, at least as it currently stands, is so far mostly geared towards a server environment. It will work just as well on a laptop, as long as you treat your laptop mostly like a server :) If your purposes are for experimentation with other OS's, test images and so forth, you may wish to also consider qemu. (No reason you can't use a bit of both). -- Dan.
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