I was recently involved in a support inquiry where a user wanted to know if NVIDIA GRID vGPU was available on Linux VDAs with the Linux guest OS, OpenSUSE LEAP (the answer at the time of writing is that it’s NOT!). Finding the answer was a lot harder than I expected as both VMware and Citrix documentation took a bit of hunting around.
Much of the marketing around Linux VDA’s mentions support for “SUSE”, “CentOS” or other genres of Linux, such as this blog. It is important that customers check both their hypervisor and VDI solutions official support matrix as both Citrix and VMware only certify, QA and support specific versions of Linux Guest OSs (usually only enterprise supported versions). Customers may find themselves unsupported by the virtualization vendors if they fail to check that the OS and specific version is supported by both their hypervisor and VDI solution (especially if mixing vendors such as Citrix XenDesktop on VMware ESXi).
Both vendors are evolving their Linux support rapidly and customers must check the documentation associated with the relevant versions of VMware/Citrix products they intend to use.
NVIDIA cannot provide support for guest OSs unsupported by the relevant virtualization vendor and as such customers are recommended to contact VMware/Citrix if they wish to use alternative versions/distributions. It is very likely many other varieties of Linux will “work” but customers should be aware that they will be unable to obtain hypervisor or VDI support in the event of an issue.
At the time of writing Horizon 7 on ESXi supports:
- Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.6 and 7.1
- CentOS 6.6
- NeoKylin 6 Update 1 (Chinese)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP3
At the time of writing Citrix XenDesktop 7.9 on XenServer supports:
- SUSE Linux Enterprise:
- Desktop 11 Service Pack 4
- Desktop 12 Service Pack 1
- Server 11 Service Pack 4
- Server 12 Service Pack 1
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Workstation 6.7
- Workstation 7.2
- Server 6.7
- Server 7.2
- CentOS Linux
- CentOS 6.7
- CentOS 7.2
Ongoing if you want to check the OSs available for a Linux VDA you should follow the advice below.
Citrix
XenServer Support for Linux Guest OSs
This is documented in the “Citrix XenServer® Virtual Machine User’s Guide” for the relevant version of XenServer e.g. for 7.0, here: http://docs.citrix.com/content/dam/docs/en-us/xenserver/xenserver-7-0/downloads/xenserver-7-0-vm-users-guide.pdf
XenDesktop Guest OSs Supported by the Linux VDA
This can be found in the Linux VDA product documentation for the relevant version of XenDesktop under the section “System Requirements” e.g. for XenDesktop 7.9 Please see http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-9/install-configure/suse-linux-vda.html (This is where I had to hunt around as bizarrely Citrix detail the genres and versions of Linux supported under each supported OS rather than in a master list, so the SUSE documentation is where you can find RHEL and other supported versions listed)
VMware
ESXi/vSphere Support for Linux Guest OSs
Supported Linux OSs are listed in the “VMware Compatibility Guide”: https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Horizon Support for Linux Guest OSs
The versions and distributions supported by Horizon are listed in the FAQ for the appropriate release e.g. for Horizon 7, here: http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/horizon/vmware-horizon-for-linux-faq.pdf
Virtually Visual 
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