The Linux kernel supports a variety of virtualization schemes, and that's likely to grow as virtualization advances and new schemes are discovered (for example, lguest). But with all these virtualization schemes running on top of Linux, how do they exploit the underlying kernel for I/O virtualization? The answer is virtio, which provides an efficient abstraction for hypervisors and a common set of I/O virtualization drivers. Discover virtio, and learn why Linux will soon be the hypervisor of choice.