I’d like some recommendations as a beginner in the virtualization space for good GUI software for running vms for both experimentation and server use.
I’ve used virtualbox on Windows before but are there any better alternatives on Linux? I hear a lot of praise of QEMU but this seems to be only terminal based like what you do with containers.
VMware workstation is free but again, I’d like to know your thoughts on other good beginner options.
Thank you advance and have a good day/afternoon/night
I tried virt-manager, but I still prefer Virtualbox myself
I’ve not used it much but I’m pretty sure GNOME Boxes can be used as a UI for QEMU, KVM, and libvirt .
Virtual Machine Manager is a great GUI frontend for KVM/libvirt and QEMU, and basically the gold standard for VM management on Linux
Cool thing is it also supports management through ssh, so you can use it as a server orchestrator if your needs don’t require something more involved like proxmox
For desktop: virt-manager, server: cockpit with the vm plugin.
Gotta try cockpit with the VM! It pulls in a tooon of dependencies, but may be worth it.
Also Proxmox
I’m going to be greybeard: you should totally use kvm/qemu, and virt-manager is great for that.
Buuuuuuut, you should also absolutely learn how to use virsh to at least manage (start/stop/delete/deploy) them, because that tooling is guaranteed to exist basically anywhere and fancy gui stuff might not, or your system might be broken in a way preventing you from running a gui app, or whatever.
I promise, the hardest thing in virsh is setting up a bridged network if you need that and the rest of it is waaay simpler than dealing with a gui for deployment.
You don’t need virsh at all. Virtual manager will work just fine.
You dont need a computer either
Yes you do
You need a computer with at least a a fee cores and some ram. Ideally it should support virtual acceleration
Nope throw it in the lake
You can use VirtualBox on linux as well, not bad for beginners.
I wouldn’t go that route in 2024
I have been using VirtualBox modified to use KVM as its backend. It has been great on my 2013 MacBook Air.
Why
If you use GNOME, try Boxes.
Virt-manager
I am a huge fan of proxmox, since I first tried it out.
It does a little bit more than just VM’s.
On my home server, I have the proxmox distro running as the only service on bare metal, and then all other work is done in the VM’s.
That’s KVM and libvirt which works on any Linux box
I use virt-manager. Works better than virtualbox did at the time (back while v6.1 was still the main release branch), it’s easier, and it doesn’t involve hitching yourself to Oracle.
VMWare may be “free,” but it ain’t free. And if you don’t care about software freedom, why choose Linux over Windows or MacOS? Also, Workstation Player lacks a lot of functionality that makes it not good as a hypervisor. Only one VM can be powered at a time, and all the configuration is severely limited. Plus the documentation is mediocre compared to the official virt-manager docs.
Gnome Boxes has worked pretty well for me.
It hides to many options. I just want to create a VM with only 4 cores
You can change the core count AFTER making the VM which I agree is really annoying.
Besides that everything else has worked more reliably than others options I’ve tried.
I’m a Virt Manager guy, personally. The only thing is 3D acceleration is usually hard if not impossible in some cases without GPU passthrough. (Unless I’m wrong. I’d like to be wrong.)
Virtual manager and maybe gnome boxes. I don’t like gnome boxes as it hides a lot of settings but has poor defaults.
Proxmox, the free version does everything you want, VM’s and containers.
Not really a desktop option like VirtualBox though.
Its Debian so you can just install any desktop you want
Also virtual box is pointless garbage especially if you’re using Linux
That’s not true.
Proxmox comes as a full distro and most people probably use it that way, but you can also install it on your normal linux and then use it in the same way as you would use VMware workstation or virtualbox etc.
