macos-virtualbox VS OSX-KVM

Compare macos-virtualbox vs OSX-KVM and see what are their differences.

macos-virtualbox

Push-button installer of macOS Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra guests in Virtualbox on x86 CPUs for Windows, Linux, and macOS (by myspaghetti)

OSX-KVM

Run macOS on QEMU/KVM. With OpenCore + Monterey + Ventura + Sonoma support now! Only commercial (paid) support is available now to avoid spammy issues. No Mac system is required. (by kholia)
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macos-virtualbox OSX-KVM
54 263
13,422 18,300
- -
5.3 3.9
9 months ago 9 days ago
Shell Python
GNU General Public License v3.0 only -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

macos-virtualbox

Posts with mentions or reviews of macos-virtualbox. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-12-15.

OSX-KVM

Posts with mentions or reviews of OSX-KVM. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-08.
  • VirtualBox KVM Public Release
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Feb 2024
    Yes, I recently had to compile some stuff on Windows (I'm on an AMD Linux host) and VirtualBox just wouldn't start Microsoft's Windows dev VM (the one they provide for free for Virtualbox). I ended up learning how to use qemu and it works great...and as a bonus I was able to run a hackintosh (via https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM) and it works near flawlessly, which was something I was never able to accomplish with Virtualbox (granted I haven't tried in a few years).

    I'm pretty happy with Qemu now, even if it's jsut a CLI interface. I was tempted to try the virt-* stuff, but honestly it seems like one more thing to learn so I'm going to hold off until I need something like copy/paste between VMs and can't figure it out in qemu direct.

  • NixThePlanet - Run macOS, Windows and more via a single Nix command + nixosModules
    3 projects | /r/NixOS | 9 Dec 2023
    Working on a patch to include it as a flake input instead of vendoring it in the repo, so this should no longer be true. I use the QCOW2s for OpenCore from osx-kvm that I have not figured out how to reproduce yet https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/OpenCore/OpenCore.qcow2
  • [PROJECT] Working on a project called ultimate-macOS-KVM!
    2 projects | /r/VFIO | 30 Sep 2023
    For almost a year, I have been coding a little project in Python intended to piggyback on the framework of kholia's OSX-KVM project, known as ultimate-macOS-KVM, or ULTMOS.
  • FreeBSD Bhyve Virtualization
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Aug 2023
    I just researched a bit, mac os x guest vm with pcie passthrough seems possible on linux.

    Dropping the links below:

    https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

    https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI-Passthrough

  • VirGL
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Aug 2023
    VirGL is definitely an interesting project, but all one has to do to get GPU passthrough working (from a Linux QEMU host to any guest OS) is: 1.) research a cheap, secondary GPU that is natively supported by the guest OS, 2.) plug such a secondary GPU into a PCIe slot on the host and hook it up to the primary monitor with a secondary cable (D-Sub vs. DVI, etc.), 3.) setup Linux to ignore the secondary GPU at boot and configure a QEMU VM for the GPU passthrough. The whole process takes perhaps one or two hours and as works flawlessly, with no stability issues. (Switching across the two GPU cables can be accomplished in software by using Display Data Channel /DDC/ utilities and switching keyboard/mouse can be accomplished by using evdev /event device/ passthrough.) More information: https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/notes.md#gpu-p...
  • Mac OS Kvm Icloud
    1 project | /r/hackintosh | 9 Aug 2023
    I get "verification failed" error when using https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
  • What are the current best methods for virtualizing MacOS on Linux?
    2 projects | /r/linux | 21 Jul 2023
    I also see there is KVM-OSX which looks to be actively maintained, but I haven't heard anything about it.
  • Lima: A nice way to run Linux VMs on Mac
    18 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Jul 2023
    You can use qemu/libvirt/kvm on any Linux host to run macOS pretty easily these days[1]. I run Ventura on unraid with nvidea gpu passthrough and it’s been fairly painless.

    You can also run macOS in docker, but it’s ultimately running through qemu/kvm as well[2]

    1. https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

    2. https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX

  • Gnome browser instead of Safari
    1 project | /r/gnome | 24 Jun 2023
    I think this could be of some use to you https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
  • I achieved to run a macOS VM on the Steam Deck in SteamOS desktop mode
    1 project | /r/SteamDeck | 8 Jun 2023
    i cloned that repository

What are some alternatives?

When comparing macos-virtualbox and OSX-KVM you can also consider the following projects:

UTM - Virtual machines for iOS and macOS

macOS-Simple-KVM - Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.

sosumi-snap

lima - Linux virtual machines, with a focus on running containers

OpenCore-Install-Guide - Repo for the OpenCore Install Guide

colima - Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup

macOS-KVM - Streamlined macOS QEMU KVM Hackintosh configuration using OpenCore and libvirt

osx-serial-generator - Mac Serial Generator - Generate complete sets of Serial Numbers for OSX-KVM, Docker-OSX and of course, OpenCore.

OSX_GVT-D - Guide to pass iGPU to MacOS KVM guest.

Docker-OSX - Run macOS VM in a Docker! Run near native OSX-KVM in Docker! X11 Forwarding! CI/CD for OS X Security Research! Docker mac Containers.

Single-GPU-Passthrough