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If you haven't tried it, the "Virtual Machine Manager" GUI [1] is also surprisingly usable on Desktop Linux. I use it with both Windows and Linux images, and ge

by ohazi 6y ago

If you haven't tried it, the "Virtual Machine Manager" GUI [1] is also surprisingly usable on Desktop Linux. I use it with both Windows and Linux images, and getting it to work with the usual guest extension niceties is straightforward. From what I remember, getting VirtualBox or VMware to launch and run properly after a few months of automatic upgrades and not launching your images for a while was always kind of a gamble. With libvirt, everything just seems to work, and your images are just ready to go when you need them. [1] https://virt-manager.org/ https://virt-manager.org/

throwaway8941 6y ago
>With libvirt, everything just seems to work Strictly speaking, you have qemu to thank for that. libvirt is just a frontend for several hypervisors, including qemu (which is what typically used).
- bonzini 6y ago
  Libvirt is also responsible for keeping the guest exactly the same after upgrades; a basic QEMU command line does not guarantee that the guest hardware remains the same when you upgrade to a newer version, while Libvirt uses the more complicated and less human-friendly options to ensure that. Libvirt does a lot more for QEMU than for other hypervisors, so much that libvirtd's initial name was qemud.
lights0123 6y ago
For simple usage, GNOME Boxes is really nice. It'll automatically download the ISOs of basically any Linux distro when you click on their logo, automatically go through the installer, and install copy/paste, dynamic resizing of the VM screen when you resize the window (I don't believe virt-manager supports that), and drag/drop support. It uses libvirt behind the scenes, so you can use virt-manager with VMs created by Boxes and vice versa.
- ohazi 6y ago
  I don't think I ever tried drag and drop, but I've gotten copy/paste and window->display resizing to work in virt-manager after manually setting up the kvm/qemu guest tools.

by ohazi 6y ago

throwaway8941 6y ago

>With libvirt, everything just seems to work Strictly speaking, you have qemu to thank for that. libvirt is just a frontend for several hypervisors, including qemu (which is what typically used).

bonzini 6y ago
Libvirt is also responsible for keeping the guest exactly the same after upgrades; a basic QEMU command line does not guarantee that the guest hardware remains the same when you upgrade to a newer version, while Libvirt uses the more complicated and less human-friendly options to ensure that. Libvirt does a lot more for QEMU than for other hypervisors, so much that libvirtd's initial name was qemud.

lights0123 6y ago

For simple usage, GNOME Boxes is really nice. It'll automatically download the ISOs of basically any Linux distro when you click on their logo, automatically go through the installer, and install copy/paste, dynamic resizing of the VM screen when you resize the window (I don't believe virt-manager supports that), and drag/drop support. It uses libvirt behind the scenes, so you can use virt-manager with VMs created by Boxes and vice versa.

ohazi 6y ago
I don't think I ever tried drag and drop, but I've gotten copy/paste and window->display resizing to work in virt-manager after manually setting up the kvm/qemu guest tools.