Hi All,<br><br>How about having a generic Virtio-based machine for emulating a virtual desktop ?<br><br>I know folks have already thought about this and probably also tried something or other on this front but, it will be good to know the downsides.<br>


<br>Virtio-desktop can be a separate specification describing a virtual desktop. <br>Of-course we cannot avoid few architecture dependent virtual devices in but the  Virtio-desktop specification will try to keep minimum possible architecture dependent devices.<br>

<br>As per our thoughts, a Virtio-desktop will have two kinds of devices:<br>
1. Architecture dependent devices: This devices will be emulated in-kernel by architecture specific code of KVM or Xen or Some other hypervisor. <br>   a) Virtualized CPU<br>   b) Virtualized PIC (i.e. in-kernel architecture specific emulation of irqchip)<br>


   c) Virtualized Timer (i.e. in-kernel architecture specific emulation of timer chip)<br>2. Architecture independent devices: This are Virtio-based devices which are usually required by a desktop virtual machine. <br>   a) Virtio-blk (storage)<br>

      - Already available<br>   b) Virtio-net (network)<br>     - Already available<br>   c) Virtio-fb (display)<br>     - It seems some work has been already done for Virtio frame buffer but I did not find drivers/fb/virtio-fb.c in latest kernel<br>

       (<a href="http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.devel/42720" target="_blank">http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.devel/42720</a>)<br>     - Is Virtio-fb work still in-progress ??<br>   d) Virtio-input (keyboard/mouse/multi-touch)<br>

     - Currently not available<br>     - It will provide keyboard input events<br>     - It will provide mouse input events<br>     - It will provide multi-touch input events <br>   e) Virtio-power (reset/shutdown/enumeration)<br>

     - It can provides info about the entire virtual machine including CPU, PIC, Timer, available Virtio devices, etc.<br>     - It can also provide CPU and Virtio-device hot-plugging<br>     - Its primary purpose would be to provide reset and shutdown of CPU and Virtio devices.<br>

     - There will be only one instance of this device and its location will be fixed for each architecture.<br><br>The Virtio-desktop specification may also describe a recommended memory map of for each architecture.<br>
<br>
Right now, only missing devices seems to be Virtio-fb, Virtio-input, and Virtio-power, which some of us are willing to take-up.<br>
<br>IMHO, If we have something like Virtio-desktop specification then all possible guest OSes can have support for it and different hypervisor can emulate it without worrying about guest support.<br><br>Best Regards,<br>
Anup<br>