[Xen-users] Announcing OpenXCI, a 100% free desktop hypervisor

[Andrew Warkentin <andreww591@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am currently working on a free desktop hypervisor based on the XCI 
toolstack from XenClient 2 (minus the proprietary components, of 
course), Xen 4.0.1, and Debian 6.0. Unlike XenClient and NxTop, OpenXCI 
will be intended for individuals wanting a high-performance alternative 
to dual-/multi-booting and hosted virtualization, rather than companies 
wanting remote provisioning (no support for remote management other than 
an SSH server on Dom0 will be implemented).
Graphics passthrough (both primary and secondary) for AMD and Intel GPUs 
will be supported. Like XenClient, OpenXCI will use lightweight graphics 
and input servers as well as a UIVM (rather than a Dom0 X server like 
NxTop). Unlike XenClient, OpenXCI will not use filtered/mediated 
passthrough because it is extremely hardware-specific (XenClient's AMD 
GPU support is only compatible with a few models of HP laptops and is 
somewhat unstable because of its use of filtered passthrough). Instead, 
it will use direct passthrough for one domain and display all other 
domains with a viewer running on the passthrough domain. When no other 
passthrough domain is running, the graphics drivers will run on the UIVM.
At the moment, I have graphics and input servers that mostly work. The 
graphics server only supports VNC (with a TigerVNC client patched to 
hide itself when the passthrough domain is focused and show itself when 
another domain is focused) to display non-passthrough domains right now, 
but I am going to add a "reverse graphics adapter" device that uses 
shared memory to send the displays of other domains to the passthrough 
domain. I am currently using a more or less stock Debian 6.0/Xen 4.0.1 
system with my graphics and input servers (as well as the corresponding 
qemu patches and a qemu wrapper script that passes the appropriate 
options to qemu because the xend toolstack doesn't support them) as my 
hypervisor at the moment.
I am going to upload everything I have done so far to the OpenXCI 
Sourceforge project (http://sf.net/projects/openxci/) shortly. I will 
also be post updates of my progress on my blog 
(http://andreww591.blogspot.com/).
Anybody here who is interested is welcome to contribute.

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