Virtualization added to kernel

Filed in archive News on December 12, 2006

Linus Torvalds officially commits virtualization component to 2.6 kernel. Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux (KVM) bested other solutions such as Xen and OpenVZ by officially getting included in the kernel. :) Here's what was announced:

The following patchset adds a driver for Intel's hardware virtualization
extensions to the x86 architecture. The driver adds a character device
(/dev/kvm) that exposes the virtualization capabilities to userspace. Using
this driver, a process can run a virtual machine (a "guest") in a fully
virtualized PC containing its own virtual hard disks, network adapters, and
display.

I cannot wait to test this by running 2.6 on Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro. :)