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So here's the deal: For some time, I've been running Windows as my main desktop OS with Gentoo Linux in a VM. I've been thinking that running the systems concurrently in a hypervisor instead of one on top of the other would be better. For this reason, I've been looking at Xen, but I'm not quite sure if it's the right thing to use here.

A few things to consider:

  • I need to be able to bring up a full-blown desktop view of each VM.
  • I need to be able to easily switch between VMs.
  • I do play the occasional game and mess with game dev, so I need hardware graphics acceleration (I have a PCIe-based NVIDIA GTX 580).
  • I have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD3-B3. I'm honestly not sure if it supports VT-d. The manual doesn't seem to mention it.
  • My CPU does support VT-x.
  • The whole setup needs to have performance comparable to my current setup. I can tolerate some performance loss, but it shouldn't be outright slow.

Is Xen the right thing for me? If not, what else could I use (preferably something free, or at least affordable for a student)?

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VT-d support will be required for the things that you want to do.

Known working compatibility can be found here: http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/VTdHowTo

You generally need to enable this support in the BIOS (for Intel chips). Typically the BIOS option is "IO virtualization" or "Directed IO" or similar.

Another good references on getting Xen to work well for your needs: http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough

Quite a few Xen users do have setups like you describe, but be prepared to work through driver issues and adding patches manually (if you card isn't supported out of the box).

The Xen mailing lists are a great resource if you go with Xen via Xen.org.http://lists.xensource.com/.http://xen.markmail.org

You can also get help on ##xen on Freenode. Quite a few people discuss those types of setups there. Ask and be patient (you may also need to be persistent - time of day can matter)

If instead you are looking for an out of the box free (not fully open source) solution you could take a look at Citrix XenClient:http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=2300325

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Thank you for the answer! I have a couple of questions: Since my graphics card is PCIe, doesn't it go through regular PCI passthrough, and shouldn't I follow the PCI FAQ/guide instead? And if that's right, wouldn't VT-d be unneeded? – Zor Sep 24 '11 at 23:28
Ah, one more question: That Citrix website seems to indicate that XenClient is only available as a trial. Do I have to purchase it for personal use? – Zor Sep 24 '11 at 23:33
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