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

  • Avid Amoeba
    51·
    3 months ago

    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.

      • Avid Amoeba
        21·
        3 months ago

        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.