With KVM, which is "probably not the final release", virtualization becomes a module you add on and is not necessarily part of the core kernel infrastructure, Dike said.

Areas for improvement include support for SMP guests and "paravirtualization," which is needed for anything except an unmodified guest.

There is a 32-bit only UML-VT port already completed by Intel's engineers in Moscow, and a UML guest can do "pretty much anything it wants but currently doesn't take advantage of everything."

KVM needs to have missing pieces added to it and the VT port needs to be updated from kernel release 2.6.12.

All this virtualization work will allow future versions of Linux to take advantage of better virtualized hardware.