i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Having shifted computers around -- basically to get my noisy, broken fan 8 year old computers out of the living room -- I now have spare (but old) computers.  So, I tried XEN hypervisor because it seems like a really good idea, and then I can turn all my computers is to "appliances" and then life will be good(er).  But no.

...

Xen won't boot, even though OpSu 11.3 says it installed it just fine.  I ran zypper dup -- wow, lots of changes, I bet Xen will work now!  No.  I added the OpSu Virtualization repository.  No changes offered.  I installed everything I could find in YAST that sounded like something Xen. No.  (Plus, I was expecting three different Xen kernels in my grub list, still only one. Hmmm.

No, No and No.

I guess I am not welcome to the future.

Later:  I found a link that had a XEN and VM FAQ.  In the fine print I discovered that the cpu needed to be vm enabled, which the Toshiba was not.

So, I tried it on my Sony, which indicated it WAS vm enabled.

Didn't work.

Then I researched VM XEN VIRTUALBOX comparisons, etc.  Every anecdotal report I could find ultimately opted for VIRTUALBOX over the other options, at least for the sorts of uses I will be using.  Hmmm.  And Virtualbox works just fine for me.  So, as long as Oracle doesn't kill it off, then this seems to be the way to go with my "virtual appliances."

Except, however, I need some machines with a lot more RAM, so that I can apportion more ram to the guest.

Oh, no! Need for new hardware! OMG!