VirtualBox 6.1 Released With Better 3D Support, UI Enhancements

[starshipeleven]

Where is this documented?

Everywhere? Just google "Linux KVM" and 90% of the tutorials are actually about using virt-manager.

Now, you can ask "how am I supposed to know that virtualization on Linux is KVM?" and I'll answer you "how am I supposed to know that to virtualize something I need to use Virtualbox" (and not VMWare, for example, that is better and actually an industry standard).

Also, are you assuming people instinctively know how to use Virtualbox? Because everyone started reading a tutorial, even Virtualbox. Virtualization is an advanced concept, the average consumer does not grasp it without some explanations. What is a CPU/GPU and such, why you need more or less cores or RAM or whatever.

You are the one taking for granted the amount of knowledge you have here.

[Unklejoe]

Everywhere? Just google "Linux KVM" and 90% of the tutorials are actually about using virt-manager.

Now, you can ask "how am I supposed to know that virtualization on Linux is KVM?" and I'll answer you "how am I supposed to know that to virtualize something I need to use Virtualbox" (and not VMWare, for example, that is better and actually an industry standard).

Also, are you assuming people instinctively know how to use Virtualbox? Because everyone started reading a tutorial, even Virtualbox. Virtualization is an advanced concept, the average consumer does not grasp it without some explanations. What is a CPU/GPU and such, why you need more or less cores or RAM or whatever.

You are the one taking for granted the amount of knowledge you have here.

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".

[zexelon]

I have to agree with Unklejoe above. I started with virtualbox and have used it for years in a number of use cases. It is still what I recommend medium skilled tech users use in most cases.

It is uniform, monolithic, simple to install and simple to use.

I have not yet tried the latest version, I am curios to see how its 3D support has improved! A typical use case for me was to run CAD on a linux desktop. Outside of very simple models though this use case broke down.

In the end I moved to KVM/virt-manager combo. It offers by far the best performance I have found and the best integration of GPU passthrough... but it is NOT of the faint of heart. I would go so far as to say the vast majority of Linux users or potential users would not be willing to or interested in getting virt-manager up and running.

Its sort of like running gentoo vs. ubuntu. One will give you probably the very best performance of any OS out there in the end... but if you just need your OS to run, Ubuntu will be installed and running days earlier than gentoo.

[starshipeleven]

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

Google is personalizing search results based on previous searches and what you clicked, therefore whatever you see is very tainted. That's one of the reasons I hate Google search. It validates your current worldview, it does not show you how the world actually is.

If I do the same search with DuckDuckGo (that is not tracking what I did in the past, and is therefore a better example of what a true beginner would get in his search results) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Install+Wi...&t=ffcm&ia=web

you get some for VMWare, some for Virtualbox and some generic bullshit useless articles that just waste your time. Ah yes, there is one about Hyper-V too, because why not.

The key difference is that VirtualBox is one homogeneous thing.

No, being a homogeneous thing is irrelevant.

If I search with the right keywords, like "KVM Linux VM" I almost only get tutorials on how to install Virt Manager, and as I said none gives 2 shits about installing manually components in modern distros that have dependency management.

The actual key difference here is that Virtualbox works on Windows, which is 90% of consumer PCs, and therefore FAR more likely to show up in a very generic search result about Virtual Machines.

As I showed above, VMWare Player shows up there in equal quantity (and it is just as gratis, and works better too), for the same reasons.

[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.

[starshipeleven]

I would go so far as to say the vast majority of Linux users or potential users would not be willing to or interested in getting virt-manager up and running.

Dunno, for serious distros like Fedora/CentOS and OpenSUSE you just install it and then you can create VMs. There is no complicated setup required. GPU passthrough is complicated. But that's NOT something you would normally do.

Again, this is true for the newer versions. If you are stuck with a 3 year-old version from Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS release then yeah it's crappy and rigid and limited, but that's a distro issue.

Really, just don't use Ubuntu at all.

[alcalde]

Well, most people should be using virt-manager, rather than libvirt directly.

That's still rocket science compared to VirtualBox.

Look at all the rigamarole you have to do just to select where to save the VMs. Storage pools?

https://blog.wikichoon.com/2014/07/virt-manager-changing-default-storage.html

[alcalde]

libvirt is the library, virt-manager (the GUI application) is pretty much the same thing as Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation Pro, it just keeps things arranged slightly differently.

There is also GNOME Boxes which is a (suprise surprise) dumbed down GUI for VMs that is also a frontend for the same stuff.

virt-manager is still needlessly complex, with "storage pools", storing things on root by default, etc. It doesn't even have documentation. VirtualBox gives you snapshots, copies, copy/paste, shared folders, etc. in a nice, simple fashion.

[alcalde]

Everywhere? Just google "Linux KVM" and 90% of the tutorials are actually about using virt-manager.

Now, you can ask "how am I supposed to know that virtualization on Linux is KVM?" and I'll answer you "how am I supposed to know that to virtualize something I need to use Virtualbox" (and not VMWare, for example, that is better and actually an industry standard).

Also, are you assuming people instinctively know how to use Virtualbox? Because everyone started reading a tutorial, even Virtualbox. Virtualization is an advanced concept, the average consumer does not grasp it without some explanations. What is a CPU/GPU and such, why you need more or less cores or RAM or whatever.

You are the one taking for granted the amount of knowledge you have here.

As for the first point, virt-manager doesn't even have documentation (!!!), unlike VirtualBox. As for point two, VirtualBox is open source and actually in repos, unlike VMWare. I remember trying virt-manager and had no idea where it was putting my VM's data. It took forever to discover it was putting it in root (!!!), which given my root was BtrFS was not a good idea. Trying to change this involved learning about and configuring "storage pools". VirtualBox - you can simply select where to save each VM's data. Apparently virt-manager has issues with needing to chown ISOs and all sorts of other nasty stuff too. It's not close to being user-friendly. You don't have to a sysadmin to figure out how to use VirtualBox.

[alcalde]

Dunno, for serious distros like Fedora/CentOS and OpenSUSE you just install it and then you can create VMs. There is no complicated setup required. GPU passthrough is complicated. But that's NOT something you would normally do.

Again, this is true for the newer versions. If you are stuck with a 3 year-old version from Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS release then yeah it's crappy and rigid and limited, but that's a distro issue.

Really, just don't use Ubuntu at all.

I use OpenSUSE and there is a complicated setup required if you don't want it installing your VMs on root. And given that root on OpenSUSE defaults to using BtrFS, it's a good idea to put the files somewhere else or create a subvolume that doesn't employ copy-on-write. And to make this change you have a complicated "storage pool" thing you have to read about (hard given there's no documentation listed on virt-manager's home page), understand and configure. VirtualBox - just select where you want to store the VM on the VM configuration screen and you can just pick the default location in the general settings.