quickemu VS homebrew-qemu-virgl

https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu

Tl;Dr use quickemu: https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu

There's also quickgui to help with launching VMs: https://github.com/quickgui/quickgui

(I've been using it for annual chores on windows)

[2] https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu/blob/0c8e1a5205...

Multipass is pretty clutch for trivial VMs on MacOs for sure. I use it for a bunch of ssh jump boxes running vpns to different sites. The macOS build does not support custom images (lest not without [some truly insane hacks](https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/1260#issuecomm...) , which doesn’t really matter for what I use it for but it is kind of a bummer. If you need something with a little more grunt but don’t want to go full blown with writing your own QEMU tooling or fussing with something like UTM or Parallels, [quickemu](https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu) is a really nice qemu wrapper with sane defaults that can expose a whole lot of power if you need it.

Also: https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu/issues/88

Overall, don't be afraid to switch distro (use Ventoy, load a few ISOs just in case), try to make sure you have an easy way of backing up your stuff (be it with a separate /home partition, or like I do with storing everything important in a separate drive and then using symlink to make it 'appear' in their 'default' places), and you can always use VM in a pinch (consult this guide or use quickemu or gnome-boxes)

In case some things you do absolutely needs Windows, keep this guide for setting up VM in mind, or use quickemu's GUI.

VM will be shutdown automatically when it's inactive for a while. I will eventually add more distros going forward. Most distro isos are downloaded using the quickget script from the wonderful quickemu project. You may directly contribute to the upstream project to get the distro added to DistroSea.

If you want to do this super easily, check out the QuickEmu project with the QuickGUI: https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu

Looks great! Does anyone know how Virter compare with quickemu?

If you want a DE like GNOME or KDE then use this qemu package, graphics run like butter IMO on my M1 MacBook Air (though only on Linux guests, not Windows) https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl

I didn't use this, but a similar/related project that is for MacOS, https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl

Vagrant is an orthogonal tool to this, it is a VM orchestrator not an actual VM. What does this do: well, qemu doesn't have virgl support merged yet, so you need to go to some lengths to compile it for yourself.

All of the other stuff (spice, virtio) is for "it should be a nice user experience" above and beyond simply fast. In other words, you should be able to copy and paste between the host OS and the guest. You should be able to slide your mouse across the border of the VM window and do some clicking around then simply slide it back out and use your mouse with native host-OS windows again.

These things are all not granted when you use qemu out of the box. I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure how much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring all this out.

Quickemu is for making this easier (and on Linux.)

How about the build with VIRGL support here?

I recently discovered QEMU, switched from VirtualBox on my Mac (Intel, Big Sur), and have been loving the improved performance. Running Linux Mint is amazing, especially after knazarov's homebrew package of the 3D-accelerated QEMU-Virgl project.