VirtualBox is ridiculously simple to set up and get virtual machines going. Shared folders, shared clipboard and much more are no issue.

But.

It eats resources. The installed virtual machines (VM) run relatively slow. What have you found to be feature comparable - and most importantly more resource-efficient - alternatives for running VMs under Linux?

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
    9·
    12 hours ago

    Definitely if you’re on Linux, use Qemu (and the best is to install a GUI to use it after)

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
    2·
    11 hours ago

    You can specify the virtualization engine in VirtualBox, including KVM.

    A couple of easy virtualization tools that allow you to create VMs in a few clicks are Gnome Boxes and QuickEmu, which leverages Qemu and KVM

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    15 hours ago

    Qemu/Kvm or VMware(Sadly only works on some distros and vmware works best with Windows)

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
      3·
      18 hours ago

      I agree. The only feature where I’d say it’s weaker feature-wise is it doesn’t have any form of virtual GPU acceleration - either you deal with software rendering or have to pass through a graphics card (I’ve done it, but it’s not easy.).

      Otherwise, I’d say it tends to run better than VirtualBox, though it’s been years since I last used Vbox anyhow. A plus is Virt Manager comes in most distro repos, whereas VirtualBox doesn’t. Also, it allows you to directly edit the XML, so you can do some cool stuff that would be really annoying (not impossible) to do in VirtualBox.

      • cole@lemdro.idEnglish
        4·
        11 hours ago

        actually, you can do vulkan passthrough if the guest machine is also linux

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    50·
    1 day ago

    Under Linux, the recommended route is KVM/Qemu, with Virt-Manager as the GUI front-end for them. You will need to follow tutorials to install it correctly, as it requires special steps, e.g. adding them to specific usergroups. But once it works, it works well.

    • golden_zealot@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Yea, the installation isn’t too difficult. Looking at my groups as well I think it’s only the libvirt group that you have to add a user to for KVM/QEMU with Virt-Manager, but the same could be said for VirtualBox as I believe you have to still add the user to the vboxusers group if you were to install it instead.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
      2·
      23 hours ago

      I recall I had to do like one thing to get it working outside of just apt install but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I just put the error in a web search and found what was needed to deal with it.

  • Filetternavn@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    41·
    1 day ago

    virt-manager is my go-to. There’s also Gnome Boxes, but I’ve never used it myself. virt-manager is the best I’ve tried, personally. Both use KVM, so they should be much more resource efficient

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    91·
    1 day ago

    Vagrant by Hashicorp.

    Edit: if the news of IBM acquiring them goes through, I will cry. And we live in the worst timeline, so it’ll happen.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      ibm is going to buy the entire ansible-verse; so be ready.

      i will weep with you in solidarity. 😉

    • milliams@lemmy.world
      2·
      24 hours ago

      While it wasn’t a requirement, be aware that Vagrant (along with all Hashicorp products) are no longer free software and are instead under the Business Software Licence.

  • testman@lemmy.ml
    13·
    1 day ago

    As jet points out, QEMU for actual hardware virtualisation.

    There is one relevant thing, which is not exactly in the same category, but does somewhat similar thing:
    containers
    most popular example being Docker
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization_(computing)
    containers don’t emulate whole hardware stack like virtual machines do, they just run the guest OS on top of host OS.
    so because they don’t put resources towards emulating hardware, they are much more resource efficient.
    so if your problem is “I’m running Fedora but I want to run something that for some reason runs just on Ubuntu”, then you could use containers for that.
    containers are mostly used in headless environments (as in servers, no GUI), so running and displaying desktop Linux inside them is a bit tricky, but it can be done.

    • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi
      11·
      1 day ago

      they emulate just the OS

      Containers don’t emulate anything. They have an OS installed within them. Typically you use Alpine Linux which super minimalistic and lightweight.

    • Alex@lemmy.ml
      4·
      1 day ago

      I’ve been using https://containertoolbx.org/ recently to manage my “other distro” requirements. It doesn’t do anything special but works nicely as a wrapper around podman and does all the bind mounts and uid mappings so you can just enter your $HOME as though you have set up your account in a new OS.

      • PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social
        2·
        12 hours ago

        Distrobox is Toolbx but more portable (packaged on basically all distributions) and supports way more distributions as guests. I recommend using that if not on Fedora or you want to run a different guest than Fedora.

  • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    Virtualbox should not run slowly in terms of compute. Make sure your allocating enough cores and memory, and VT/AMD-V is enabled in the BIOS of the host. Also Guest additions should be installed. Not sure but that might help IO speeds.

    What might be slow, Graphics may not be acceralerated. Exactly what VM software to use, what it works with, and actually getting it to work can be challanging. Installing guest drivers though is probably required.

    For Linux KVM solutions are probably preferred and more native solution but more technical to use. Getting graphics acceleration with KVM has been challenging, though may be possible. KVM is used widely on servers, but is not that desktop friendly.

    All VM solutions are resource intensive. Use containers and/or native software to reduce/avoid that.

    Edit: I myself have used VirtualBox but these days I use KVM including on my workstation.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 day ago

    I haven’t used it nearly as much as VirtualBox but Boxes (flatpak) is definitely a breeze to use. It uses KVM under the hood I think. If your use cases are complicated it might abstract away too much though.