Hello,

I'm curious if any of the virtualization solutions available for Linux allow running guests in a virtual console via DirectFB or something similar. I'd like my host Linux instance running on the bare metal to be as stripped down and minimal as possible, not even including Gnome or KDE and just having a simple command line interface to start/stop VM guests in what whatever VC specified ... is this possible?

yes, you can.
Virtualbox has support for so-called vrdp-connections.
with this feature, you can start a virtual machine without gui and connect to the guest using microsoft RDP client (or linux "rdesktop").
see http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/Use...html#frontends for more.

Your description matches how I run KVM on my Slackware hosts. I have headless hosts running Slackware guests. Hosts and guests are primarily managed via SSH.

Thanks guys, but I don't think either scenario you describe is quite what I'm after.

My host would be a GUI-less Linux system, but not headless. I would be able to log in via a text-only virtual console, standard Linux stuff. Then I want to be able to do something like:

startvm win_xp_vm tty8

and then flip over to it via alt+F8, just like I'd do startx and flip between the X11 graphics display on alt-F7 and the main console on alt-F1. If I wanted to start another VM, I might do:

startvm ubuntu_kde tty6

### or ###

startvm fedora_gnome tty6

and so on...

Do any of the virtualization solutions for Linux allow this?

vboxsdl doesn't do the trick?

On a desktop you can use KVM with the option '-vga std' and it will present a virtual console.