[In the news] Linux kernel to fully support Xen: Too little too late?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

For what it is worth,  Fedora 16 will enable this functionality again, a
long gap after Fedora 8.

http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/2240036580/Linux-kernel-to-fully-support-Xen-Too-little-too-late

"Core to KVM’s rapid success is the fact that it’s included in the
kernel. In contrast, Xen has always worked well on Linux platforms, but
since 2007 users have needed to apply a significant kernel patch and do
some configuration not included in the core Linux distributions to make
it work. That’s a headache and a support issue for OSS vendors and IT
staff. By contrast, since KVM’s inclusion in the kernel and declared
support from the major distributions such as Red Hat and Ubuntu, getting
a KVM environment going is easier and also encouraged by the distributors."

"The Xen community has been trying to get Xen introduced into the Linux
kernel for years, but the need for multiple kernel binaries was always a
sticking point with Linux kernel maintainers. In 2009, Linux creator
Linus Torvalds wrote that "Xen really is horribly badly separated out.
It gets way more incestuous with other systems than it should. It's
entirely possible that this is very fundamental to both
paravirtualization and to hypervisor behavior, but it doesn't matter --
it just means that I can well see that Xen is a f---ing pain to merge."

Rahul