[SLUG] >1 OS at a time

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

> This may be garbage, but I've a vague memory of software that allowed
> you to have several OSs live at any one moment on one machine, and the
> ability to switch between them.
>
> Anybody think what that might be?

Xen

I scanned the review of Fedora 6 in the current issue of Linux Format
and it said Fedora was up at the front of Xen offering, but I think
SUSE does well too.

There was an article .. even a SLUG discussion .. about it maybe a
year ago. I vaguely think that the deal about VMWare is you get to run
OS1 inside OS2, whereas Xen is a whole new layer shoehorned between
the hardware and the OS. The OS has to be changed so it calls Xen,
which put me off rather. But anyway, if it works, it allows crazy
things like moving your Fedora Core 6 to another machine while it's
still working, and running Windows et al also at the same time as well
plus too. Possibly most use for hardware farm type environments where
they may actually do that shifting thing to optimise their use of
hardware.

Ooh look <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen>

J