tun2socks VS virtualbox-kvm

You can probably do this for VirtualBox (and any Linux program) by using tun2socks to create a network interface that routes through a proxy (SOCKS5 if you want UDP support), and then moving that network interface to a new namespace. You can run VirtualBox or any other programs in that new namespace, they don't have to be aware of the proxy at all (since they just see a regular gateway).

https://github.com/xjasonlyu/tun2socks

I've been using debian 11 with 5-10.0-20 kernel on a modern laptop with virtualbox and bridged adapter ( static ip configured within system itself ) and tun2socks works pretty well on it with the routes in example page of tun2socks

I need someone familiar with linux (specifically the things below) to help set up on a vps through SSH.

External [Install anIpsec Server for an L2PT ] + [tun2socks] to lift a tun interface and connect it to the external server (shadowsock client)

This is true. If someone says "I just want something that works, and Virtualbox works" it doesn't really raise any eyebrows. It's really the tone of "I am unable to make QEMU/KVM work, since I am not a rocket scientist" that implies, maybe they would use QEMU, if only it wasn't horrifically difficult to get working. I think if your experience with QEMU is this bad, you may have just gotten a bit unlucky and gotten off into the weeds on a detour you probably did not need.

That said, are there reasons why someone who just wants things to work and doesn't want to tinker ever would choose QEMU over Virtualbox? Definitely. Here's a good one: the Virtualbox kernel modules were notoriously problematic. Back in the day, loading the vboxdrv module would add TAINT_CRAP in your running kernel[1], because the kernel developers were tired of dealing with bug reports that are the fault of the vboxdrv. Presumably it's better nowadays, but out-of-tree modules are generally a source of headache. Another good one is features: Virtualbox has a lot of great features for desktop end users, but QEMU can do a whole lot more; it supports absolutely tons of architectures and system options. You get access to a wide range of paravirtualization devices through Virtio drivers, including VirtioFS, a dramatically superior solution for mounting directories into VMs versus Virtualbox's Shared Folders feature, in my opinion. It's also possible to do a lot more advanced things, like setting up a discrete GPU passthrough and Looking Glass, or passing a portion of your Intel iGPU using GVT-g.[2]

Of course, some day Virtualbox may support a KVM backend, just as virtualization tools are starting to support unified hypervisor backends on Windows and macOS. There's even an existing patch, though I do not know what the status is and whether or not it could ever be merged upstream.[3] So maybe in the future, choosing between Virtualbox or KVM will become unnecessary.

For now though, it's definitely not clear what you should recommend to someone IMO. (For this particular use case, I don't even recommend a VM at all; I think for Windows 95, 86Box is a better solution.)

[1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_GVT-g

[3]: https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39300317

It was here: https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm/blob/de...

Check out our latest blog post, "VirtualBox KVM Technical Deep-Dive," where we unveil the inner workings of our newly released VirtualBox KVM variant on GitHub. Explore the replacement of the original VirtualBox kernel module with a KVM hypervisor backend for Linux.

Dive into the technical details and discover how we optimized performance, especially for Windows guests: https://cyberus-technology.de/articles/vbox-kvm-deep-dive?ut...

We also pushed our latest state to github where we enabled more paravirtualization enlightenments for Hyper-V. These enlightenments improve VM performance for Windows 10 and Windows 11 guests.

https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm/

Starting with VirtualBox 7, USB3 no longer requires the commercial extension pack. See https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm/blob/de...