VirtualBox is ridiculously simple to set up and get virtual machines going. Shared folders, shared clipboard and much more are no issue.
But.
It eats resources. The installed virtual machines (VM) run relatively slow. What have you found to be feature comparable - and most importantly more resource-efficient - alternatives for running VMs under Linux?
Under Linux, the recommended route is KVM/Qemu, with Virt-Manager as the GUI front-end for them. You will need to follow tutorials to install it correctly, as it requires special steps, e.g. adding them to specific usergroups. But once it works, it works well.
Not for the faint of heart, but I’ll keep it in mind.
definitely not as easy as virtualbox
Gnome Boxes is about as easy as virtual box, and wont break your kernel.
Virt-manager with qemu-system, although if you use the kvm driver for both performance should be about the same I think.
Don’t forget virtualbox has a lot of configuration options that may improve performance, Ive never had a problem with it but also never need high performance from a VM.
https://virt-manager.org/ is a no brainer. Built upon libvirt/Qemu/KVM it’s way more powerful and pretty much just as easy to use. There is zero reasons to use anything else.
How easy is it to convert a VirtualBox machine+hdd to Virt Manager?
Pretty damn easy.
qemu-img convert -f vdi -O qcow2 Windows10.vdi Windows10.qcow2Here’s a more complete guide: https://cubiclenate.com/2024/05/30/converting-vdi-to-qcow2-step-by-step-guide-for-virt-manager-migration/
virt-manager is my go-to. There’s also Gnome Boxes, but I’ve never used it myself. virt-manager is the best I’ve tried, personally. Both use KVM, so they should be much more resource efficient
I haven’t used it nearly as much as VirtualBox but Boxes (flatpak) is definitely a breeze to use. It uses KVM under the hood I think. If your use cases are complicated it might abstract away too much though.
works decently enough for me is https://virt-manager.org/ to deal with libvirt. its not quite as nice in some ways but way less resource intensive.
I agree. The only feature where I’d say it’s weaker feature-wise is it doesn’t have any form of virtual GPU acceleration - either you deal with software rendering or have to pass through a graphics card (I’ve done it, but it’s not easy.).
Otherwise, I’d say it tends to run better than VirtualBox, though it’s been years since I last used Vbox anyhow. A plus is Virt Manager comes in most distro repos, whereas VirtualBox doesn’t. Also, it allows you to directly edit the XML, so you can do some cool stuff that would be really annoying (not impossible) to do in VirtualBox.
actually, you can do vulkan passthrough if the guest machine is also linux
Surprised no one is saying Xen
This “Beginners Guide” they have there is a serious turnoff. They might want to consider a more lightweight and friendly intro to their software. 😄
Still, if I find the time to go through this massive wall of text, I will.
To be clear, I don’t recommend it. But it was once favored over KVM for a variety of applications and it works in a fundamentally different way. I’m just surprised how quickly it’s lost favor among techies.
Definitely if you’re on Linux, use Qemu (and the best is to install a GUI to use it after)
I’ve looked at it. It comes up a lot. Thank you.
Did you use virt-manager with it?
Really wish we could get in the habit of recommending GUIs first, not last.
Really wish we wouldn’t have to separate the two. This adds a complication layer for exiting Windows users.
Ideally: install app (insert name). Run and enjoy.
Might be that you really don’t need VMs but just lightweight namespace containers. If so, you can use docker/podman, systemd-nspawn or various other tools. The overhead will be less than 1% if you stay within the same architecture as your host.
