Most operating system distributions which run on kernels that have been ported to Xen should be compatible with Xen. The only issues that really affect a distro's compatibility with Xen are its choice of glibc tls implementation and whether it uses /dev, devfs or udev.
All modern distros are converging on NPTL and udev. Devfs is the only thing Xen doesn't and probably will not support (as it's easily worked around, and deprecated in Linux 2.6 anyhow).
However, as a "this worked for me" reference, this page summarises experience with Xen under the various distributions of the ported operating systems. If you have experience of other distributions running over Xen then please add to this table. Detailed notes on particular distributions should be given a page of their own which can be referenced from here.
Distribution |
As |
Xen version |
Testing performed |
Type of user |
Notes |
Linux |
|||||
Debian GNU/Linux v.Sarge |
Dom0 + DomU*3 |
3.0.1 |
colliertech.org/ and friends |
||
Debian Sarge |
Dom0 + DomU |
2.0.5/Linux 2.6.10 |
Production servers |
Advanced |
please read DebianSarge |
Debian Etch |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0.3/Linux 2.6.18 |
Production servers |
Advanced |
please read DebianEtch |
Ubuntu (All Versions) |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.1 |
Various |
Beginner |
|
Gentoo |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0.2 |
Various |
Developer |
|
Fedora Core 2 |
|
|
|
|
|
Fedora Core 3 |
Dom0 + DomU |
All |
Various |
Developer |
|
Fedora Core 4 (rawhide) |
Dom0 + DomU |
-unstable |
Various |
Developer |
please read FedoraXenQuickstart |
Fedora Core 5 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0.1 |
"extremely little" |
Developer/experimenter |
please read http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Xen |
CentOS 3.4 |
DomU |
|
Production servers |
Systems Engineer |
|
CentOS 4 |
Dom0 + DemU |
2.0.6/Linux 2.6.11 |
Testing Server |
Advanced |
please read FedoraXenQuickstart |
Centos 4.2 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0.0 |
Production Environment |
Advanced |
|
RHEL 3 |
|
|
|
|
|
Mandrake 10.1 |
|
|
|
|
|
Mandriva Linux 10.x |
Dom0 + DomU |
2.0.6, 2.0.7 |
Production |
Beginner/Advanced |
|
Mandriva Linux 2006 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0 |
Unknown |
Intermediate |
|
Mandriva Linux 2007 |
Dom0+DomU |
all |
Production servers |
Beginner |
|
Pardus 2007 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.1.0 |
|
|
|
Slackware |
DomU |
|
|
|
Using existing native install |
SUSE Pro 9.3 |
DomU + DomO |
2.0.5c |
|
Various |
|
Suse 8.2 |
DomU + Dom0 |
2.0.7 |
Variious Telco Production Environments |
Advanced |
|
OpenSuSE 10.1 |
DomU |
3.0.2 |
Basic run/compat testing |
Intermediate/Advanced |
fairly simple install with rpmstrap plus (submitted) patches; requires fixes to /etc/sysconfig/network/config for interface naming |
Novell SLES 10 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.0.2 |
Testing for production |
Advanced |
|
NetBSD 3.0 |
Dom0 + DomU |
2.0.x |
Various |
Beginner/Advanced |
|
FreeBSD 8.0 |
DomU |
3.1.x |
Testing Server |
Advanced |
|
eisXen RC1 |
Dom0 + DomU |
3.1.4 |
Testing Server |
Beginner |
Howto (German only) |
Prebuilt guest images: DistributionDownloads
xen.org,
