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

    • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
      71·
      2 months ago

      Cool thing is it also supports management through ssh, so you can use it as a server orchestrator if your needs don’t require something more involved like proxmox

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    13·
    2 months ago

    I’m going to be greybeard: you should totally use kvm/qemu, and virt-manager is great for that.

    Buuuuuuut, you should also absolutely learn how to use virsh to at least manage (start/stop/delete/deploy) them, because that tooling is guaranteed to exist basically anywhere and fancy gui stuff might not, or your system might be broken in a way preventing you from running a gui app, or whatever.

    I promise, the hardest thing in virsh is setting up a bridged network if you need that and the rest of it is waaay simpler than dealing with a gui for deployment.

      • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        2 months ago

        You can change the core count AFTER making the VM which I agree is really annoying.

        Besides that everything else has worked more reliably than others options I’ve tried.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 months ago

    I am a huge fan of proxmox, since I first tried it out.

    It does a little bit more than just VM’s.

    On my home server, I have the proxmox distro running as the only service on bare metal, and then all other work is done in the VM’s.

  • jrgd@lemm.ee
    6·
    2 months ago

    Alongside many others, I agree that using QEMU through GUI frontends like virt-manager or GNOME Boxes, or even server-focused solutions like Cockpit+VM plugin or Proxmox layered on top of your installation.

    I just want to note a decent point against other solutions like VirtualBox or the VMWare products that work on Linux: these solutions that don’t rely on QEMU almost certainly need the user to install out-of-tree kernel modules (that in some cases may also be proprietary). QEMU and its frontends don’t need out-of-tree modules in a majority of distros and can work out of the box with all features (given BIOS configuration of the host and hardware supports them).

      • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        That’s not true.

        Proxmox comes as a full distro and most people probably use it that way, but you can also install it on your normal linux and then use it in the same way as you would use VMware workstation or virtualbox etc.

      • krolden@lemmy.ml
        22·
        2 months ago

        Its Debian so you can just install any desktop you want

        Also virtual box is pointless garbage especially if you’re using Linux

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    51·
    2 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@lemmy.ca
        21·
        2 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.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    Virtual manager and maybe gnome boxes. I don’t like gnome boxes as it hides a lot of settings but has poor defaults.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    I use virt-manager. Works better than virtualbox did at the time (back while v6.1 was still the main release branch), it’s easier, and it doesn’t involve hitching yourself to Oracle.

    VMWare may be “free,” but it ain’t free. And if you don’t care about software freedom, why choose Linux over Windows or MacOS? Also, Workstation Player lacks a lot of functionality that makes it not good as a hypervisor. Only one VM can be powered at a time, and all the configuration is severely limited. Plus the documentation is mediocre compared to the official virt-manager docs.