Archived/DistributionSupport

From Xen


Icon Info.png This page is marked out-of-date, see Dom0_Kernels_for_Xen and XenDomUSupport for up-to-date lists.


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
Debian GNU/Linux v.Sarge Dom0 + DomU*3 3.2.1 colliertech.org/ and friends JustThisGuy
Debian Etch Dom0 + DomU 3.0.3/Linux 2.6.18 Production servers Advanced
Ubuntu (Pre 8.10) 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
Fedora Core 5 Dom0 + DomU 3.0.1 "extremely little" Developer/experimenter
CentOS 3.4 DomU Production servers Systems Engineer
CentOS 4 Dom0 + DemU 2.0.6/Linux 2.6.11 Testing Server Advanced
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
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
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

Prebuilt guest images: DistributionDownloads