kvm

Following nearly three months of development, Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel, which brings a number of improvements to the open source operating systems' graphics, virtualization and power management capabilities, as well as boosting overall performance.

Open source virtualization app QEMU has reached version 0.11 and brings some 1400 changes from 90 contributors.

In another sign interoperability between virtual Linux and Windows operating systems is gathering pace, Red Hat has quietly released a set of drivers to improve the performance of Windows guests hosted on Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor.

Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) has reached release 0.8 which includes a new graphical wizards for cloning disk images adding devices to existing virtual machines and a new system tray icon.

The native Linux virtualisation hypervisor Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) has reached milestone 87 and now integrates the qemu emulator into a single package.

Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released with hundreds of changes from the previous version, including a new architecture for suspend and resume which Linus Torvalds says switches the kernel to a “new world order”.

With the increasing prevalence of virtualization comes the greater need for management of “guest” operating systems that run as virtual machines on the hypervisor, and a new tool called libguestfs is set to provide that on Linux.

If the Linux virtualisation space wasn't heated enough, the open source hypervisors Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) and Xen are now duking it out for independent developer interest, according to Xen hacker Simon "Horms" Horman.