virtualbox-kvm VS virt-manager

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...

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.

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/

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.

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.

https://virt-manager.org/ <- Recommend this as Front-end

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/

$ 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

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.