[ Thanks to Carla Schroder for this
link. ]
“KVM, which stands for “kernel-based virtual machine”, was first
developed by Qumranet. Red Hat bought Qumranet in 2008 and made KVM
the core of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers. KVM is
licensed under the GPL and is part of the mainline kernel, so any
Linux distribution can support it. KVM is a Type 2 hypervisor,
which means it runs inside an operating system. Some popular Type 2
hypervisors are Xen and VirtualBox. Type 1 hypervisors, such as
IBM’s z/VM and VMWare ESXi, run on the bare metal and don’t need
operating systems. KVM supports pretty much any guest operating
systems: Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows, and whatever else you have
lying around.“Ubuntu Server, like KVM, is growing into an enterprise
powerhouse. Ubuntu supports KVM on x86 and x86_64. Unlike Red Hat
and Novell, the big two enterprise Linux vendors, you can download
and test Ubuntu without having to register or wade through sales
pitches. If you want training, commercial support, or online
services like the Landscape systems manager or Ubuntu cloud
services, they’re there when you want them.”