I use vmware and qemu
None, I use Docker for Linux, 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.
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’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 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 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!
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
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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.
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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
I am planning for XP.
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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’ll have another look. Didn’t seem to be an option to have it on a Windows guest when I installed it.
It also isn’t entirely foss
I’m a GNOME user.
Gross
Grow up. People use different software to you. It’s not the end of the world.
Besides, Gnome is great.
Real for me it was problematic it was barely customizable and tracker3 randomly broke most of my apps
Qemu/KVM and Virt Manager. I have three VMs that I pass my GPU to: a Hackintosh, a Windows 10, and and Windows 7.
Do you have two GPUs or do you fully switch to the VM while passed through?
I have two GPUs - an RX 550 hooked to the monitors and 580 for VMs. Until recently, once the VM shut down, the 580 was able to return to Linux and be used again via PRIME - no reset bug. It randomly stopped working and I’ve tried to debug it to fix the problem to little avail.
I actually may have seen the same issue recently. Have you tried adding
initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_initto your kernel launch params?I’ll have to try that. What I have tried so far is running a different kernel version and making sure my driver blacklists are correct (I found that the GPU shouldn’t ever connect to snd_hda_intel. It briefly eas again, but after fixing it, I still had the problem.).
For me, I have intel integrated + amd discrete. When I tried to set DRI_PRIME to 0 it complained that 0 was invalid, when I set it to 2 it said it had to be less than the number of GPUs detected (2). After digging in I noticed my cards in
/dev/dri/by-pathwere card1 card2 rather than 0 and 1 like everyone online said they should be. Searching for that I found a few threads like this one that mentioned simpledrm was enabled by default in 6.4.8, which apparently broke some kind of enumeration with amd GPUs. I don’t really understand why, but setting that param made my cards number correctly, and prime selection works again.Huh. My issue seems different, but I’ll still test that flag to see if it changes anything. My problem looks like the device doesn’t return to host after VM shutdown, possibly because of the reset bug (based on my observation of dmesg), which I hadn’t encountered after about a year of GPU passthrough VM usage.
Ahh, yeah if it’s specifically when coming back from a VM, that sounds different. Maybe the vfio_pci driver isn’t getting swapped back to the real one? I barely know how it works, I’m sure you’ve checked everything.
I never found a way to share a Public folder with VirtManager though, I need to move files between host and guest. How would you go about it?
I go to the host folder I want to transfer files from and run ‘’’python3 -m http.server’’’. Then (I can’t remove if I use ‘’’ip a’’’ to find the IP address of the host or if I used mDNS), I use the guest web browser to download files.
And here I have just been using samba.
Install the quemu guest agent in the VM. For Linux and Windows you’ll even be able to drag and drop.
I hope you air gap that Windows 7 VM
virtmanager as frontend for qemu/kvm. I tried the commandline but it’s too annoying
KVM
(VMware is proprietary software)
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 ngl i prefer vmware more
Me three.
KVM + Qemu + libvirt + virt-manager = ❤️
I used KVM with
virt-managerfor a long time. Even ran a gaming VM with GPU pass-through.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.
control it from any whuAT!?
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.
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.
Virtual manager isn’t scriptable at all as it is just a GUI for libvirt. You are probably looking for qemu or virsh (libvirt)
I use qemu, but with Quickemu 'cause I’m lazy lol.
Virtmanger-kvm-qemu
I’m kinda lazy so when I need one, I just use Gnome Boxes and it’s pretty easy to setup.
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.
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 absolutely can. People have done Proxmox installs on Debian and unsupported architectures by building from source.
Thanks for the pointer. But since Proxmox supports both KVM and LXC virtualization, wouldn’t that make it both type 1 and type 2?
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
