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
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
Virt-manager
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 few cores and some ram. Ideally it should support virtual acceleration
Nope throw it in the lake
Not advisable as most machines aren’t rated for that environment. Also even it is it will be a pain to fine especially if there is mud.
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.
For desktop: virt-manager, server: cockpit with the vm plugin.
Also Proxmox
Gotta try cockpit with the VM! It pulls in a tooon of dependencies, but may be worth it.
I’ve not used it much but I’m pretty sure GNOME Boxes can be used as a UI for QEMU, KVM, and libvirt .
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
Alongside many others, I agree that using QEMU through GUI frontends like virt-manager or GNOME Boxes, or even server-focused solutions like Cockpit+VM plugin or Proxmox layered on top of your installation.
I just want to note a decent point against other solutions like VirtualBox or the VMWare products that work on Linux: these solutions that don’t rely on QEMU almost certainly need the user to install out-of-tree kernel modules (that in some cases may also be proprietary). QEMU and its frontends don’t need out-of-tree modules in a majority of distros and can work out of the box with all features (given BIOS configuration of the host and hardware supports them).
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.
Virtual manager and maybe gnome boxes. I don’t like gnome boxes as it hides a lot of settings but has poor defaults.
VMware Player is the best by far in terms of GUI and ease of use. With that said:
- It breaks once in a while due to kernel module / kernel mismatches that sometimes require manual patching. This is rare but it happens once every couple of years
- It may become paid given Broadcom’s corporate history
Virt-manager is pretty decent and it will not break on a stable distro but:
- Some of it workflows are far from intuitive
- Virtualization via virt-manager (really KVM) doesn’t currently have any 3D acceleration for Windows VMs
- Windows driver/guest tools installation and integration isn’t nearly as trivial as it is with VMware
Personally, I’d try using virt-manager because it will work “forever.” If you can’t get something to work and feel overwhelmed, go to VMware for now but long term you’ll likely have to get used to virt-manager.
I would avoid VMware with a ten foot pole. Also I personally think virtual manager is easier to use.
It objectively takes fewer mouse clicks and keyboard keystrokes to install a Windows VM with drivers and full integration (3D, shared folders, etc.) on VMware Player than virt-manager. I could count them for you but I have better things to do. Setting up an equivalent VM with virt-manager is significantly more work. Just a trivial example - getting the VirtIO drivers. On virt-manager you have to search the web, find multiple sources, figure out which to use, figure out which version to download, download it. On VMware, you click the top menu, then Install VM tools, the end. With that said I’m not complaining, because I don’t have the time to write the patches needed for virt-manager to work the same, but the difference is there.
There is only one source of the drivers and it is the Fedora Project.
Are you sure? Cause KVM’s doc lists two: https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers and the first one ain’t Fedora. The language used doesn’t suggest that one is a canonical source either. Now imagine that I’m a noob or otherwise using KVM for the first time. I have to figure out what the difference is and which one to get because I don’t want to make a mistake and end up with a broken install. Mind you I have ended up with bad graphics depending on which driver and what version I’ve installed.
Stop suggesting people use vmware
Proxmox, the free version does everything you want, VM’s and containers.
Not really a desktop option like VirtualBox though.
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.
Its Debian so you can just install any desktop you want
Also virtual box is pointless garbage especially if you’re using Linux
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.
