I use vmware and qemu
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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.
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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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 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!
Can virt-manager boot windows boxes?
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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Absolutely, it’s also made way easier with quickemu, allows you to spin up a properly configured Windows VM with pretty much no effort
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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Virt-Manager, even works remotely via SSH.
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 also isn’t entirely foss
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.
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
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Those are container platforms not virtualization
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Currently virt-manager on top of qemu/kvm on Debian 12. It was the easiest to get to emulate a TPM on my ancient hardware (9ish years old, but still powerful).
I’m learning enough about the backend that I’m hoping to get off the Redhat maintained software and only use the qemu cli, maybe write my own monitor with rust-vmm when I learn enough rust to do so.
Virtmanager and qemu/kvm
I’m kinda lazy so when I need one, I just use Gnome Boxes and it’s pretty easy to setup.
I use qemu, but with Quickemu 'cause I’m lazy lol.
I use LXD (or Incus) containers
I’ve been curious about those for a while, what are they about, are they somehow better than the usual Docker/Podman conatiners?
They run a full distro rather than the minimalist that Docker containers use. You can also use them to run gui apps but that needs a bit more work to configure. I run Google Chrome sandboxed this way.
I tried using virt-manager+kvm to try some stuff out the other day but I failed to set-up some crucial things. Probably me being incompetent.
Not like virtualization is a big part of my life anyway. I just wanted to try some other distros and such without rebooting.
If I were to get serious about virtualization I’d need to build a new PC with a second GPU. Then I could stop dual-booting and do everything with VMs. But it’d only be worth it to get serious about learning how to virtualize stuff if I were to do that.
You can single pass through but it feels more like your using one os but if that’s the case wouldn’t dual booting be better
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.
xcp-ng. except now everything is just containers on atomic fedora because it seems to fit my laziness better and doesn’t require updating multiple vm os’s
Raw qemu at the command line for the one I use on a daily basis (not recommended for the average user). VirtualBox if I need to spin something up quickly but don’t expect to need to keep it past the current testing cycle.
Virtualbox is slow and the licensing for guest addons is nasty. It is proprietary of course and if a person in a company uses it unlicensed they will send the company a massive invoice.
I only need it for the very occasional testing of open-source software on Windows, using the precanned VM images provided by Microsoft (last I checked, they had none for qemu, or I would be using that instead). And if you’re using software commercially, you’d better be damned sure you understand the licensing before setting up. A company of any size will have lawyers vetting that anyway.
In other words, I don’t disagree with you, but those issues don’t matter for my use case.
Proxmox seem powerfull
It’s a Type1, not Type2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor#ClassificationThanks 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 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.
So far I’ve been fine with some Oracle Virtualbox and some using the VM Manager that was in my distro or maybe I downloaded it. It’s just called Virtual Machine Manager made by Red Hat. Libvirt.
Between those I’ve been able to do everything I have needed.
