VirtualBox 6.1 Released With Better 3D Support, UI Enhancements

[Danny3]

Let's be fair here - Linux kernel 5.5 hasn't been released yet. You're using pre-release software; one should only do that if one is willing to risk bugs or incompatibilities.

Yes, I know I'm not completely fair here, but I'm just tired of being stuck to older version of the kernel because of Virtualbox.
I need to squeeze as much performance as I can from my computer and that means I need to use the latest kernel version that I can.
Everything work ok when I upgrade the kernel, even to this pre-release version, except for Virtualbox which is always behind.

[Danny3]

Heh, so how many distros already ship 5.4/5.5 kernels? Arch?

I don't know, I use Kubuntu 19.10 and I manually upgrade the kernel with a tool called Ukuu.
Everything works ok when I do this, except for Virtualbox which refuses to boot up the machine.

[Danny3]

They should have released kernel 5.5 first.

Why?
RC1 is available and installable.
Can't they make it compatible with it already?

[Danny3]

Don't use beta and alpha kernels if you want support

I need beta or alpha kernel for best performance.
Every other software works without problem after this upgrade, why can't Virtualbox do the same?

[Danny3]

I've switched long time ago to libvirt... is there still any reason where VirtualBox offers any advantage?

I don't know, I find it very easy to use and I don't have weeks to waste on reading tutorials of other solutions.

[edwaleni]

I simply googled "KVM GUI" and came up with the VMM tool. Previously I used VBox and VMWare and always thought libvirt was all CLI so i avoided it.

Personally I would like to see lxc get merged into the VMM, but that is a different subject.

Well, blow me down...it was already there.

The virt-manager application is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines through libvirt. It primarily targets KVM VMs, but also manages Xen and LXC (linux containers). It presents a summary view of running domains, their live performance & resource utilization statistics. Wizards enable the creation of new domains, and configuration & adjustment of a domain’s resource allocation & virtual hardware. An embedded VNC and SPICE client viewer presents a full graphical console to the guest domain.

[bug77]

Pretending to be a beginner, I just did a search for "Install Windows VM Linux" and most of first page shows results about VirtualBox. One page mentions the following methods:

- Oracle VirtualBox
- VMWare Player
- QEMU

Okay, so then I look up QEMU and quickly get introduced to a bunch of new terms... libvirt, Virt-Manager, QEMU, qemu-kvm, KVM, etc. Okay fine, let me do a search for "QEMU vs KVM" since those are two terms I see frequently used together. That leads me to this page: https://www.fir3net.com/UNIX/Linux/w...u-and-kvm.html

Okay, that takes me too far down the rabbit hole, back up and continue...

Eventually I find out that I can just install Virt-Manager and it should pull in all the dependencies and just work.

The key difference is that VirtualBox is one homogeneous thing. You just install VirtualBox. When doing research, you can search for "how to do X with VirtualBox", or "install Windows XP in VirtualBox".

I mostly agree with that, but even VirtualBox comes with extensions and guest additions that are not that obvious to figure out. Extensions come with the installer, but for some reason they're not installed by default; guest additions you have to find them yourself (they're not listed on the same page VirtualBox is) and even them just mounting the ISO results in an error more often than not (if works if you force it , though).

Why?
RC1 is available and installable.
Can't they make it compatible with it already?

Today, yes, maybe. But you do realize that for VirtualBox 6.1 to be released this week, the code was probably frozen a month ago.
And you're making a big deal out of nothing, support for future kernel versions will be added in point releases.

[240Hz]

I need beta or alpha kernel for best performance.
Every other software works without problem after this upgrade, why can't Virtualbox do the same?

Beta and Alpha kernel does not mean more performance.

[Danny3]

Beta and Alpha kernel does not mean more performance.

Next kernel version usually means more performance and it's alpha and beta until it's released.
I don't care about the names, I care only about running the the next kernel version as soon as possible to get the improvements that might be there earlier than release date.

[240Hz]

Next kernel version usually means more performance and it's alpha and beta until it's released.
I don't care about the names, I care only about running the the next kernel version as soon as possible to get the improvements that might be there earlier than release date.

But this is not true, just look at the benchmarks that Michael posts. Newer kernel != faster , and especially alpha and beta versions have many regressions that result in worse performance than stable kernel.