virt-manager VS QEMU

Compare virt-manager vs QEMU and see what are their differences.

virt-manager

Desktop tool for managing virtual machines via libvirt (by virt-manager)

QEMU

Official QEMU mirror. Please see https://www.qemu.org/contribute/ for how to submit changes to QEMU. Pull Requests are ignored. Please only use release tarballs from the QEMU website. (by qemu)
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virt-manager QEMU
114 189
2,118 9,236
2.5% 2.2%
8.6 10.0
7 days ago about 9 hours ago
Python C
GNU General Public License v3.0 only GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
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.

virt-manager

Posts with mentions or reviews of virt-manager. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-16.
  • Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Apr 2024
    It's still being updated. I don't see anything on the virt-manager homepage or GitHub that would suggest it is deprecated.

    https://virt-manager.org/

    https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager

    It can't do literally everything Qemu/libvirt can do using only the UI, but given that it has escape hatches to directly edit libvirt configurations, and libvirt has escape hatches to directly pass arguments to Qemu, there's very little you can't do with it.

  • Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Mar 2024
    I would love to see a serious comparison (features & performance) between VMWare ESXi, Proxmox VE and let's say a more stock RHEL or Ubuntu. And maybe even include FreeBSD/bhyve.

    Because yes, in terms of core functionality it should be in the same ballpark. And in terms of UI, Virtual Machine Manager [0] was not that bad.

    [0] https://virt-manager.org/

  • Manage virtual machines with virt-manager
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jan 2024
  • Quickemu: Quickly run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jan 2024
    Shout out to https://virt-manager.org/ - works much better for me, supports running qemu on remote systems via ssh. I used to use this all the time for managing bunches of disparate vm hosts and local vms.
  • Oracle data base
    2 projects | /r/Fedora | 10 Dec 2023
    If not, I would just run a CentOS Stream 8 virtual machine using either GNOME Boxes or virt-manager, and set up networking and ssh so you can access the database from the host.
  • Can i run fortnite on Linux??
    1 project | /r/linux_gaming | 6 Dec 2023
    https://virt-manager.org/ <- Recommend this as Front-end
  • Cockpit: Web-based graphical interface for servers
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Oct 2023
    I'd say it is half-baked webmin. You can only use it with NetworkManager, and if you have an even remotely complex network setup for VMs, NetworkManager usually must be turned off, which makes Cockpit practically unusable. virt-manager [1] is way more powerful for those who like managing VMs with GUI.

    [1] https://virt-manager.org/

  • Failed to acquire pid file : /var/local/run/libvirt/qemu/driver.pid
    2 projects | /r/kvm | 28 Aug 2023
    $ apt build-dep libvirt $ git clone https://github.com/libvirt/libvirt.git Cloning into 'libvirt'... $ cd libvirt $ meson setup build $ ninja -C build $ ninja -C build install $ which virsh /usr/local/bin/virsh $ which libvirtd /usr/local/sbin/libvirtd $ apt install libgtk-3-dev libpulse-dev libgbm-dev libspice-protocol-dev \ libspice-server-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libepoxy-dev libfdt-dev $ git clone -b v5.1.0 http://git.qemu.org/qemu.git $ cd qemu-v5.1.0 $ git submodule add -f https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/dtc/dtc.git dtc $ ./configure --disable-werror --target-list=arm-softmmu \ --enable-opengl --enable-gtk --enable-kvm --enable-guest-agent \ --enable-spice --audio-drv-list="oss pa" --enable-libusb \ --enable-trace-backend=simple --enable-debug $ make $ make install $ git clone https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager.git $ apt install gobject-introspection libosinfo-1.0-0 libosinfo-1.0-dev \ gir1.2-libosinfo-1.0 libvirt-glib-1.0-dev $ cd virt-manager $ ./setup.py configure --prefix=/usr/local $ sudo ./setup.py install $ sudo usermod -a -G libvirt root $ sudo usermod -a -G libvirtd root $ sudo usermod -a -G libvirt-qemu libvirt-qemu $ sudo usermod -a -G libvirt marietto $ sudo adduser libvirt-qemu $ sudo groupadd --system libvirt $ sudo groupadd --system libvirt-qemu $ sudo newgrp libvirt-qemu $ newgrp libvirt $ /usr/local/sbin# libvirtd & [1] 2875 $ /usr/local/sbin# virtqemud & info : libvirt version: 9.7.0 info : hostname: chromarietto error : virPidFileAcquirePathFull:409 Failed to acquire pid file : /var/local/run/libvirt/qemu/driver.pid Resource temporarily unavailable error : virStateInitialize:672 : Initialization of QEMU state driver failed Failed to acquire pid file : /var/local/run/libvirt/qemu/driver.pid Resource temporarily unavailable error : daemonRunStateInit:617 : Driver state initialization failed $ /usr/local/sbin# ps ax | grep libvirt 2875 pts/0 Sl 0:00 libvirtd $ /usr/local/sbin# ps ax | grep virtqemu nothing If I do the opposite way : $ /usr/local/sbin# virtqemud & $ /usr/local/sbin# ps ax | grep virtqemu 3041 pts/0 Sl 0:00 virtqemud $ /usr/local/sbin# libvirtd & info : libvirt version: 9.7.0 info : hostname: chromarietto error : virPidFileAcquirePathFull:409 Failed to acquire pid file : /var/local/run/libvirt/qemu/driver.pid Resource temporarily unavailable virStateInitialize:672 : Initialization of QEMU state driver failed Failed to acquire pid file : /var/local/run/libvirt/qemu/driver.pid Resource temporarily unavailable daemon RunStateInit:617 : Driver state initialization failed $ /usr/local/sbin# ps ax | grep virtqemu 3041 pts/0 Sl 0:00 virtqemud $ /usr/local/sbin# ps ax | grep libvirt nothing
  • Issue Testing hyperland in virt-manger
    1 project | /r/NixOS | 14 Aug 2023
    I want to test Hyprland with NixOS in a VM using Virt-Manager (https://virt-manager.org/) on Arch Linux host before installing it on my machine.
  • We Replaced Firecracker with QEMU
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Jul 2023

QEMU

Posts with mentions or reviews of QEMU. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-03.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing virt-manager and QEMU you can also consider the following projects:

quickemu - Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux desktop virtual machines.

UTM - Virtual machines for iOS and macOS

docker-libvirtd

TermuxArch - Experience the pleasure of the Linux command prompt in Android, Chromebook, Fire OS and Windows on smartphone, smartTV, tablet and wearable https://termuxarch.github.io/TermuxArch/

sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor

Unicorn Engine - Unicorn CPU emulator framework (ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, PowerPC, RiscV, S390x, TriCore, X86)

cloud-hypervisor - A Virtual Machine Monitor for modern Cloud workloads. Features include CPU, memory and device hotplug, support for running Windows and Linux guests, device offload with vhost-user and a minimal compact footprint. Written in Rust with a strong focus on security.

Vagrant - Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing development environments.

lutris - Lutris desktop client

xemu - Original Xbox Emulator for Windows, macOS, and Linux (Active Development)

flatpaks

em-dosbox - An Emscripten port of DOSBox