Hi,
I believe it's high time we start to providing Debian in form of official
virtualisation images. In contrast to the ISOs currently provided it
allows a quicker evaluation/testing of Debian (and can also be very
useful for testing (e.g. someone wrote on debian-release that he doesn't have
access to oldstable/stable systems, with prepared virtualisation
images that would no longer be an issue). For many setups this could even
replace the installer since software selection and hostname can easily
be tweaked post-install.
I think it's sufficient for starters to provide images for stable
(they can be updated for every few point updates if needed).
What virtualisation solutions should be supported?
- Virtual Box seems like a natural candidate since it's free and
included since Squeeze.
- Vmware has a significant installed base and is relevant, although
proprietary
- Microsoft Virtual PC is likely also needed
- Qemu
- Citrix XenServer?