New computer xen? lvm uefi

[paxmark2]

My 8 year old computer, probably the /sda hard drive, but possibly more is unresponsive.  It has on it Windows 7 in sda1 and debian stable in sda2, etc. I am backed up on a NAS. I was going to delay a year or more longer, but I am moving up a notch or two with a new computer.  And no, I will probably not put siduction on that one, but it is a knowledgeable group here.  I have read some up on lvm and youtube videos, I can handle that easily.


I am leaning towards using testing and staying with Stretch when it turns stable.  However I would have a new enough kernel with  backports. I wil have 8 GB of ram.   My board will be a gigabyte GA-H81m Intel 81 socket with Intel HD4400 integrated video.  They seem to work for most people.  Just ethernet on the board.  I do have old ethernet card, sound card and 512 mb video card around in case of real snafus. 


So my main question is, does it make sense to go with xen for my windows 7 install    My cpu will be an i-3 4170 Haswell Dual core which has VT-x but not VT-d.   The xen irc and my reading seem to agree that HVM guest(s) will work, but I will not have PCI passthru to HVM guests as my chip does not have VT-d.  I will not be using 3-D acceleration in windows, just tax programs, possibly sigil, phone management software, etc.  15 years of dual booting is getting old,


QUBES does look interesting, being one more level of security on top of xen, but I think I will be busy enough with the install and using  LVM  and UEFI for the first time.  Would I be satisfied with using Windows 7 about once every month with XEN or just go with dual booting like I alway have?  Peace out. 

[dibl]

I was a VMware user for about 5 years, running Win 7 and 8 on virtual machines, on aptosid/siduction, with the free VMware Player.  But their code is fragile and kernel upgrades kept breaking the ability to build new kernel modules.  About a year ago I set up a Qemu/KVM machine and installed Win 10 on that, and it has been rock solid, even as KDE went from 4 to 5 and tore up everything else.  I only use Win 10 for some special genealogy programs that have no equivalents for Linux.  I do everything else including light graphics (photo editing, resizing, etc.), LibreOffice work, and multimedia stuff on siduction.

I don't know whether KVM offers any ability to pass through PCI device information, but there is USB connectivity between the guest and devices like USB sticks, and of course network connectivity to the Internet and printers, but not to the KVM host computer as far as I can tell.

So, if you want to try the KVM route for your Windows installation, I would be happy to provide guidance.   

[paxmark2]

Thanks, I have used virtual box years ago.  KVM appears much easier than XEN and for me and the version in Jessie-backports is the same as testing and sid.  I will ponder which over the days unto arrival.  It sounds fairly easy.  Peace out. 

[paxmark2]

dibl  I am ready to learn what worked for you


Via the command line I have been successful in starting a Win7 install via the dvdrom in qemu, but at aborted early on.  I have stared at several various  web sites with various routes.  I need to read more on qemu-img and assorted man pages.


virt-manager compains that libvirtd cannot be found.  might be the change to libvirt0    But for running it in testing, command line is probably the best idea. 



If more appropriate I can start a new thread in software.  Thanks for steering me towards qemu-kvm. 

[dibl]

OK PM me with your e-mail address, and I'll send you some guidance that I wrote when I learned how to set up KVM.



p.s.  On my system

Code: [Select]

systemctl status libvirtd

shows

Code: [Select]

● libvirtd.service - Virtualization daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/libvirtd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2016-05-04 08:45:40 EDT; 2h 54min ago
     Docs: man:libvirtd(8)
           http://libvirt.org
 Main PID: 2941 (libvirtd)
    Tasks: 16 (limit: 512)
   CGroup: /system.slice/libvirtd.service
           └─2941 /usr/sbin/libvirtd