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Fine with me I recently moved to KVM from Vbox. It took a few hours of paper cuts to get the first VM up and running but once done it's very easy to use. Good t

Fine with me I recently moved to KVM from Vbox. It took a few hours of paper cuts to get the first VM up and running but once done it's very easy to use. Good timing for me.

vladvasiliu 3y ago
What kind of paper cuts? I've always wondered why people would use 3rd party virtualization solutions instead of the native ones. Is it for better performance? Is it so that they could use the same tools as their colleagues using a different OS? Are there things which flat out don't work or are much more difficult to configure? In my case, Hyper V and KVM always allowed me to do what I needed.
- yrro 3y ago
  It's familiarity and following online "tuts" that show how to use particular tools.
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  Shared folders don't work as well (still haven't figured out how to mount a read-only folder in the guest or a read-write folder where permissions translate correctly), linked clones aren't straight forward (and you can't modify the parent while a child clone exists), and the UI is much worse compared to VirtualBox, which is mostly self-explanatory. With KVM/QEMU I found it hard to even find the right man page with the information I'm looking for. I still prefer KVM over VirtualBox, but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't more work.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  TIL Hyper-V is more than system calls, I didn't know it has a GUI (edit: apparently it's command-line only, and the GUI I saw on an image search is on Windows Server only, so 99% of people can't use this already). Thought that it was a set of APIs for vmware and the likes to use under Windows, and that Virtual PC was what Microsoft offered as front-end. But which other "native" virtualisation platforms do you mean? I don't know that the Linux Foundation has an official virtualisation product, and couldn't name one for macOS or iOS either. Edit: and Hyper-V is apparently missing basics like any audio support at all, so that makes it useless for most users. Not sure this would be anyone's default choice when you can use cross-platform, open source, and more featureful software
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    > edit: apparently it's command-line only, and the GUI I saw on an image search is on Windows Server only It's not server-only, but AFAIK does require the pro edition, though. But I suppose that or enterprise is what people usually use in a professional setting. The feaure is called "Hyper-V management tools" or similar. > But which other "native" virtualisation platforms do you mean? I don't know that the Linux Foundation has an official virtualisation product, and couldn't name one for macOS or iOS either. I meant KVM for Linux. I don't know what the Linux Foundation recommends (I never interact with it), but KVM is integrated in the Linux kernel, which seems as "native" as can be. There's a macOS virtualization framework, but I've stopped using that platform right around when it came out, so I can't recall its name. > Edit: and Hyper-V is apparently missing basics like any audio support at all, so that makes it useless for most users. I didn't know it missed audio support. I also wonder whether "most users" actually require audio from their VM. I'd expect the main use of a VM to be running random programs that don't work on the native OS. On Windows, that usually means running some Linux program. Those don't often require sound. KVM supports sound, without issues. > Not sure this would be anyone's default choice when you can use cross-platform, open source, and more featureful software Because it's already there, mostly, and doesn't require you to carefully read a known-hostile company's EULA. --- edit: Don't these nice functions (sound, mouse integration and folder sharing) actually require the VBox "Extensions"? IIRC, those aren't open-source.
    - lucb1e 3y ago
      VBox extensions are needed for remote desktop integration and USB passthrough newer than USB 1.1 iirc. Hmm, and maybe 3d acceleration? Not sure exactly, but anyway, iirc: sound, folder sharing, and definitely mouse integration are part of the open source / freely licensed part. I didn't know that KVM was a Linux kernel API actually, seems odd that they're not all using that as that sounds like it should indeed give the best performance and stability! Apparently proxmox does, but not vmware, virtualbox, qemu, or others whose name I might have heard. > I'd expect the main use of a VM to be running random programs that don't work on the native OS At work we use it for security, so things like meetings (video calls) are in a separate VM, so sound is a nice to have there, one could say. Privately, I indeed use it for running software that WINE has trouble with, like games, where sound is also not exactly optional if you want "your base is under attack" alerts. Lastly, I use it for some Windows server software that I fell in love with a decade ago and didn't manage to find a good Linux replacement for: there, indeed, I didn't need sound. > Because it's already there My start menu doesn't have virtualisation software out of the box, and apt install virtualbox is as simple as figuring out what front-end might be able to talk to KVM. Or, for Windows, finding where to get that command-line utility that talks to Hyper-V in the kernel for non-pro Windows versions I agree about the Oracle hostility thing, though

Fine with me I recently moved to KVM from Vbox. It took a few hours of paper cuts to get the first VM up and running but once done it's very easy to use. Good timing for me.

vladvasiliu 3y ago

What kind of paper cuts? I've always wondered why people would use 3rd party virtualization solutions instead of the native ones. Is it for better performance? Is it so that they could use the same tools as their colleagues using a different OS? Are there things which flat out don't work or are much more difficult to configure? In my case, Hyper V and KVM always allowed me to do what I needed.

yrro 3y ago
It's familiarity and following online "tuts" that show how to use particular tools.
mr_mitm 3y ago
Shared folders don't work as well (still haven't figured out how to mount a read-only folder in the guest or a read-write folder where permissions translate correctly), linked clones aren't straight forward (and you can't modify the parent while a child clone exists), and the UI is much worse compared to VirtualBox, which is mostly self-explanatory. With KVM/QEMU I found it hard to even find the right man page with the information I'm looking for. I still prefer KVM over VirtualBox, but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't more work.
lucb1e 3y ago
TIL Hyper-V is more than system calls, I didn't know it has a GUI (edit: apparently it's command-line only, and the GUI I saw on an image search is on Windows Server only, so 99% of people can't use this already). Thought that it was a set of APIs for vmware and the likes to use under Windows, and that Virtual PC was what Microsoft offered as front-end. But which other "native" virtualisation platforms do you mean? I don't know that the Linux Foundation has an official virtualisation product, and couldn't name one for macOS or iOS either. Edit: and Hyper-V is apparently missing basics like any audio support at all, so that makes it useless for most users. Not sure this would be anyone's default choice when you can use cross-platform, open source, and more featureful software
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > edit: apparently it's command-line only, and the GUI I saw on an image search is on Windows Server only It's not server-only, but AFAIK does require the pro edition, though. But I suppose that or enterprise is what people usually use in a professional setting. The feaure is called "Hyper-V management tools" or similar. > But which other "native" virtualisation platforms do you mean? I don't know that the Linux Foundation has an official virtualisation product, and couldn't name one for macOS or iOS either. I meant KVM for Linux. I don't know what the Linux Foundation recommends (I never interact with it), but KVM is integrated in the Linux kernel, which seems as "native" as can be. There's a macOS virtualization framework, but I've stopped using that platform right around when it came out, so I can't recall its name. > Edit: and Hyper-V is apparently missing basics like any audio support at all, so that makes it useless for most users. I didn't know it missed audio support. I also wonder whether "most users" actually require audio from their VM. I'd expect the main use of a VM to be running random programs that don't work on the native OS. On Windows, that usually means running some Linux program. Those don't often require sound. KVM supports sound, without issues. > Not sure this would be anyone's default choice when you can use cross-platform, open source, and more featureful software Because it's already there, mostly, and doesn't require you to carefully read a known-hostile company's EULA. --- edit: Don't these nice functions (sound, mouse integration and folder sharing) actually require the VBox "Extensions"? IIRC, those aren't open-source.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    VBox extensions are needed for remote desktop integration and USB passthrough newer than USB 1.1 iirc. Hmm, and maybe 3d acceleration? Not sure exactly, but anyway, iirc: sound, folder sharing, and definitely mouse integration are part of the open source / freely licensed part. I didn't know that KVM was a Linux kernel API actually, seems odd that they're not all using that as that sounds like it should indeed give the best performance and stability! Apparently proxmox does, but not vmware, virtualbox, qemu, or others whose name I might have heard. > I'd expect the main use of a VM to be running random programs that don't work on the native OS At work we use it for security, so things like meetings (video calls) are in a separate VM, so sound is a nice to have there, one could say. Privately, I indeed use it for running software that WINE has trouble with, like games, where sound is also not exactly optional if you want "your base is under attack" alerts. Lastly, I use it for some Windows server software that I fell in love with a decade ago and didn't manage to find a good Linux replacement for: there, indeed, I didn't need sound. > Because it's already there My start menu doesn't have virtualisation software out of the box, and apt install virtualbox is as simple as figuring out what front-end might be able to talk to KVM. Or, for Windows, finding where to get that command-line utility that talks to Hyper-V in the kernel for non-pro Windows versions I agree about the Oracle hostility thing, though