Let's stop some of the misinformation within your post shall we? I
am part of the Xen packaging team.
David Baron wrote:
1. Is Xen mainly for sharing multiple operating systems running together,
or are there some other really interesting uses?
Xen is an advanced virtual machine. You can run one version of linux or such
inside your installed version. Useful for testing the new version out,
running things in a protected environment. I am no expert but I do not
believe "sharing" is going on.
Less advanced, easy to set up and use is qemu (using the kqemu accelerator
kernel module).
Both run off disk images, not real file systems.
Xen can run off disk images or real filesystems, in the sense of
slicing off a partition using LVM and giving it as the virtual drive for
the virtual host (domain). You can also have one domain that uses a disk
image and another using a partition running on the same machine. Also
you should be able to run a domain which has both a disk image and a
partition. I'm not as versed with qemu although I've used it's basic
functions using a disk image and having tried the same LVM partition
slicing to see if it works.
2. If you want to run Etch when it is stable, but need a package in
Unstable is it better to.
a.) Use "unofficially" supported backports?
b.) Scrap stable and just go unstable?
c.) Use Xen to run Unstable inside of stable?
I am no expert. However, why not just install of "official" package from
unstable. You can "test" first and see if it removes/replaces too much of
your testing or stable installation. Backports will have similar effect but
you have to manually build, install every piece.
The "official" packages for unstable or testing are usually going to
have a problem being installed on stable due to library version
differences. The backports being done at the same time as the
testing/unstable packages are being released usually and attempt to take
into account the version differences. There are also backport sites that
can be installed via apt-get so you're not manually building and
installing the packages needed. You may have to 'pin' packages to get
all the dependencies working properly as it may require other packages
besides the one you're trying to install.
Want to try unstable without going over to it. Use the virtual machine or a
live-CD such as knoppix.
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