As the title says, I would like to find the most efficient way to boot Windows XP within linux using some sort of virtual machine or emulator, but tune for best performance.
I want to boot the entire OS, not emulate the environment like Wine/Cedega.
I am not sure which product is better, particularly for speed and responsiveness.
I don't know them all, so that would be the first thing I want to know. What are my options here?
I heard about QEMU and VMware.
I also heard about some sort of built in virtual machine support in the 2.6.20 kernels, similar to QEMU... Can those kernel modules be used to do what I want to do?
I don't know how to use any of them yet, so some hints or perhaps a complete walkthrough would be handy.
I would really want to try the kernel stuff though if its confirmend to be faster, even if it involves compiling a new kernel.
Thanks for all replies in advance.

Your basic options are QEMU, VMWare, VirtualBox, Xen, and KVM (the kernel virtualization module).

Things to note: Unless you've got a fast PC, no virtualization is going to be very fast. If you try QEMU be sure to also get and use the kqemu accelerator kernel module. You'll also want plenty of RAM so as not to starve either the host or guest OS.

I've only used VMWare and QEMU myself and in some cases one is faster than the other, but usually the difference is negligible. VMWare is a bit more friendly to use.

Since you're looking for lots of performance and apparently Wine and Cedega don't fit the bill I'm going to venture a guess that you're thinking about running a few games. I'm not sure that 3D acceleration works with ANY of the vitualization options. I know it is problematic to implement.

http://www.vmware.com/community/mess...ssageID=328070

Here you can find a guide on How to install Linux on Windows using qemu

Games - sure why not. But really, I just wanna ditch Windows completely as an operating system, but it seems impossible since not everything runs on wine. Since I like my customized linux install better I would like to have I on all the time and not have to reboot ever again.
...
Can THIS be done?
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_2...c2be543ee51754
*EDIT*
My bad, I guess it doesn't quite work yet.

*coughs*
Actually its the other way around. This computer does NOT have Windows installed right now. Windows will be the guest OS.

I'm using kvm currently on my Core Duo laptop and it runs great. I've got Windows XP as well as a couple other Linux distros for testing setup. I used the Ubuntu tutorials to set it up, here's the list:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...UnderQemuHowTo
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM

I run VirtualBox with a WinXP Pro guest and it is easy to setup and fast. I cannot see the difference between the native windows and the guest. I am trying to get it working with rdesktop and seamless.
Unfortunately the seamless desktop does not work for me every other app is OK.

I am running Fedora 7 with VMWare Server 1.0.3, and Windows XP Pro as a guest. My hardware is a P4 3.4GHz, 2GB RAM. Windows XP runs very fast, almost as fast as I would expect it to if it was native.

As others have said, VMWare, and others, does not provide 3D acceleration, so high end gaming on the guest is out of the question. If you want to play games, I recommend dual booting.

I also don't know how it works in other VM's, but you can easily transport or back up your VM guest to a different installation of VMWare if your host dies. Quite nice in a server environment where uptime is important.

I have tried VMware and Xen and found that their performance is very similar

if you use VMware Server, make sure you use VNC or rdesktop to connect to it instead of the VMware builtin GUI, because, surprisingly, the VMware GUI is so unoptimized that VNC and rdesktop work better.

if you want to use Xen to run Windows, make sure you have hardware (CPU) based emulation, Vanderpool (Intel) or Pacifica (AMD)

not sure about AMD CPUs, but Vanderpool is only available on 6xxx (desktop), 7xxx (laptop), and some 5xxx (laptop) Core 2 Duo's if my memory serves me right.

I've noticed that on remote connections. And I've installed VNC on my clients for that reason. I haven't researched much, but there doesn't appear to be a way to drop the colors in the VMWare GUI. If they could do that performance would be much better.