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

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    It objectively takes fewer mouse clicks and keyboard keystrokes to install a Windows VM with drivers and full integration (3D, shared folders, etc.) on VMware Player than virt-manager. I could count them for you but I have better things to do. Setting up an equivalent VM with virt-manager is significantly more work. Just a trivial example - getting the VirtIO drivers. On virt-manager you have to search the web, find multiple sources, figure out which to use, figure out which version to download, download it. On VMware, you click the top menu, then Install VM tools, the end. With that said I’m not complaining, because I don’t have the time to write the patches needed for virt-manager to work the same, but the difference is there.