Subject: Re: Can i use NetBSD/xen on a laptop computer?
To: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih@eunetnorge.no>
From: TLorD <tld@tld.digitalcurse.com>
List: port-xen
Date: 02/05/2005 09:58:20
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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.

If you're just going to try various linux distributions, IMHO Xen is not the
way to go: it does not virtualize the hardware, has rather poor hardware
support (as stated by Carsone, plus only few network cards supported and some
more) and requires the guest operating systems already installed.

qemu is a better choice for that task, or even VMWare if you have the
resources (mainly cash); NetBSD can handle them both quite well. Or, if you
don't care about speed, bochs :)
VMWare and bochs can suspend/resume your virtual hardware (so you don't loose
your session if you have to power down or reboot), don't know about qemu.

HTH
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