I’d like some recommendations as a beginner in the virtualization space for good GUI software for running vms for both experimentation and server use.

I’ve used virtualbox on Windows before but are there any better alternatives on Linux? I hear a lot of praise of QEMU but this seems to be only terminal based like what you do with containers.

VMware workstation is free but again, I’d like to know your thoughts on other good beginner options.

Thank you advance and have a good day/afternoon/night

  • jrgd@lemm.ee
    5·
    3 months ago

    Alongside many others, I agree that using QEMU through GUI frontends like virt-manager or GNOME Boxes, or even server-focused solutions like Cockpit+VM plugin or Proxmox layered on top of your installation.

    I just want to note a decent point against other solutions like VirtualBox or the VMWare products that work on Linux: these solutions that don’t rely on QEMU almost certainly need the user to install out-of-tree kernel modules (that in some cases may also be proprietary). QEMU and its frontends don’t need out-of-tree modules in a majority of distros and can work out of the box with all features (given BIOS configuration of the host and hardware supports them).