On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 05:50:42PM -0500, Joel Rittvo wrote: > Could someone please explain (or point me to an explanation of) the > alternate builds released for the newest test kernel? Specifically: > > kernel compiled for Xen guest0 VM operations > kernel compiled for unprivileged Xen guest VMs Xen is a para-virtualisation system for x86. It provides a secure way to run a lot of copies of Linux at once on a single PC. To get the speed it doesn't emulate a PC exactly (as vmware tries to) but requires the kernels are "Xen friendly". The Xen guest0 kernel is the kernel that runs all the real devices and supports the actual hardware. The unpriviledged guests then talk to guest0 via virtual hardware interfaces. Alan