I use vmware and qemu
Linux: qemu
OpenBSD: vmm, qemu when vmm isn’t good enough
KVM + Qemu + libvirt + virt-manager = ❤️
Gnome boxes.
Based on QEMU so it’s quite robust. It works pretty well, plus it has various little features working out of the box that in some other software is a pain in the arse to configure.
Sticks out a bit on my system due to still being GTK3, but there is a GTK4 prototype out that usually works well.
Does it matter what front end it uses if the underlying environment is QEMU+KVM. Upvote for tha above.
None, I use Docker for Linux l, and Proton (Heroic) for Windows.
But if I had to pick a virtual machine: libvirt with virt-manager as a frontend, which uses KVM for virtualization.
But if I had to pick a virtual machine: libvirt with virt-manager as a frontend, which uses KVM for virtualization.
Its fair bcs vmware workstation does not support gpu passthrough libvirt with virt-manager is the only way
Can virt-manager boot windows boxes?
Absolutely, it’s also made way easier with quickemu, allows you to spin up a properly configured Windows VM with pretty much no effort
Yeah, though there’s some commandline shenanigans to get a tpm shim set up if you want it for windows 11
Correct me I’d I’m wrong, but with docker you’re limited to the filesyatems and the image of the OS you’re installing. If you need to experiment with the pre-OS boot events, can that even be accomplished with docker? E.g., trying out different GRUB settings, setting up LUKS with dropbear etc. I think those things require a VM.
Yeah, you are correct. Docker shares the kernel with the host operating system, it doesn’t use hardware virtualization. That’s why it’s so fast and simple, but it also means it’s not a traditional VM and thus comes with some limitations.
From my other comment:
Then I created a Docker image with Linux, Gnome, and novnc so I can spin one up instantly with little resource overhead and control it from any web browser.
Maybe I should release my Dockerfile.
I might actually be interested. It’s like a lightweight alternative to Proxmox?
Sort of, Proxmox does use noVNC I think, but it’s a lot of overhead. This is just a
dockercommand. I’ve finally put a page up for it: https://nowsci.com/webbian/I didn’t understand that you ran it without hardware virtualization. This is really convenient, thanks a lot for making it!
i’m listening.
Finally got around to it: https://nowsci.com/webbian/
i will be trying that one out for sure. this looks awesome for a headless desktop.
I’m just now learning about Docker and Containerfiles, so I wouldn’t be opposed to a real world example…
And the example finally exists: https://nowsci.com/webbian/
Neat! Gonna look over that!
GNOME Boxes because it doesn’t require 5 academic degrees to set up and I’m a GNOME user.
Same.
The lack of graphics acceleration is a bit painful though.
VirtualBox won’t work on Fedora 40 AFAICT, and once installed it can’t be uninstalled.
It has graphics acceleration.
Yes afaik it should have it.
I’m a GNOME user.
Gross
Real for me it was problematic it was barely customizable and tracker3 randomly broke most of my apps
Grow up. People use different software to you. It’s not the end of the world.
Besides, Gnome is great.
I use libvirt to do all my kvm/qemu stuff on my server. Using cockpit-machines web UI as a frontend. On my workstation if I ever need a VM I usually turn to Gnome Boxes for simplicity
Qemu+Kvm with virt-manager is my boy nowadays. But I’m not a heavy user of Vms, just experimented with this to build some Flatpak. But plan on trying out other distributions, just for science. It wasn’t easy to figure out how to share a folder, and I could not get drag and drop or clipboard share to work. Still though, its faster than any other solution. I used VirtualBox in the past, which was easy to work with.
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Those are container platforms not virtualization
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Usually VirtualBox. It’s easy and free.
a rather odd choice given the alternatives
Besides VMWare it always seemed the easiest for me to quickly make a Windows VM or so. Everything else usually had more configuration steps. But that’s been a while ago. There could very well have been easier tools available in the mean time. I never bothered to look.
I only ever used “permanent” virtualization once on my server. I think with Xen. But it didn’t give me any benefits for my use case so I dropped it later on. Also probably at least ten years ago.
I agree
Me three.
I use virt-manager, aka Virtual Machine Manager. Using this specifically because of the winapps for Linux repo has instructions on how to get Windows apps to run through the VM to be integrated in a Linux environment.
might try that tbh am gonna run razer software or apps that dont work on linux at all and for games am gonna use my windows ssd
How “scriptable” is virt-manager?
My biggest issue with VirtualBox is that I have to install OSes as if I’m actually installing them. There aren’t any images (at least that I’m aware of) that can run with a command, like deploying an EC2.
Virtual manager isn’t scriptable at all as it is just a GUI for libvirt. You are probably looking for qemu or virsh (libvirt)
virt-manager is a frontend for a bunch of virtualisation systems, but usually it’s configured for qemu+kvm+libvirt.
Libvirt is a dedicated API to managing virtual machines. It’s probably most versatile when launching new VMs on it by using the libvirt XML definitions, but there’s an API you can use if you want more low level access, and optional command line tooling as well.
Something like
virt-install --name=lemmyvm --vcpus=1 --memory=2048 --cdrom=/tmp/debian-netinst.iso --disk size=50 --os-variant=debian12should automatically install a Debian 12 VM (from a downloaded ISO) through the automated setup process. It’s been a while since I used that, though, so you may need an extra step or two to get the setup to autocomplete today. I think cloudinit is how you auto setup Linux distros these days?Virt-manager isn’t super scriptable but the underlying libvirt can be controlled by virsh which is a shell interface to libvirt. You can use both at the same time, e.g. start and stop via virsh and access to gui container via virt-manager/virt-viewer.
@Mwa qemu :blobfoxcomfycomputer:
VirtualBox (desktop for testing and development [Vagrant]), KVM: libvirt, Proxmox (production stuff).
Just be mindful of guest addons. (The are not foss)
Gnome Boxes 🥲 Because im avoiding to install anything to the kernel.
You’re using qemu+kvm.
https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-boxes/stable/supported-protocols.html.en
You should never install anything to the kernel if possible tbh.
You also could try virtual manager
It is all KVM so it is natively supported
Proxmox seem powerfull
It’s a Type1, not Type2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor#ClassificationI use Proxmox for the machine that I use to download all of the Linux ISOs I want. You know, with a VPN, through BitTorrent. Linux ISOs.
Proxmox isn’t really its own hypervisor. It combines a few common projects to make a OS. It is pretty much KVM with corosync for clustering.
With that being said it is a solid platform. Just keep in mind it is just standard Linux virtualization and for single nodes you can get the exact same setup easily on any Linux system.
Well, the exact same except for the frontend. It’s arguably better than virt-manager imo. I wonder how hard it would be to get pve-manager running outside the OS.
You can run a system as a VM on Guix, so yes, that. It’s a type-2 hypervisor, as it uses QEMU. Pretty sure this also works for NixOS.
Qemu can be a type I as well if you use hardware acceleration such as KVM or Hyper-V.
