QEMU 4.2 Released With Many Improvements For Linux Virtualization

[phoronix]

Phoronix: QEMU 4.2 Released With Many Improvements For Linux Virtualization

QEMU 4.2 is out this morning as a key piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU-4.2.0-Released

[timofonic]

How is it compared to VirtualBox and VMWare? Specially in terms of features.

[starshipeleven]

How is it compared to VirtualBox and VMWare? Specially in terms of features.

It's better in almost any way. Also, Virtualbox is garbage that loses badly even if compared to VMWare.

Only thing where VMWare has an edge is for the 3D acceleration guest driver, but you can set a QEMU VM to use a "VMware graphics card" to use that driver in a QEMU VM too.

Still, QEMU is not a full virtualization suite, it's just the virtualization backend. So most people need to use stuff like virt-manager to have a user interface similar to Virtualbox and VMWare Workstation

But it will work fine with a couple scripts too. Many prefer this way as it is very light and gives maximum control over features that the GUI application may show or not.

[George99]

The greatest advantage of VirtualBox is any home user can easily set up a virtual installation like Windows without studying docs or searching in the Internet for hours.

[starshipeleven]

The greatest advantage of VirtualBox is any home user can easily set up a virtual installation like Windows without studying docs or searching in the Internet for hours.

You can do that with VMWare too, and the only complex thing with Virt Manager for a home user is that the "guest additions" iso is not usually bundled with the GUI application and you have to go fetch it manually from a website.

[Unklejoe]

The greatest advantage of VirtualBox is any home user can easily set up a virtual installation like Windows without studying docs or searching in the Internet for hours.

Exactly.

There's QEMU, libvirt, KVM, Virt Manager, … the list goes on.

These are all things that may or may not be related, but nevertheless, come up while trying to figure out how to create a VM under Linux.

With VirtualBox, you install VirtualBox and that's it. It also works on Windows, so your VMs are portable. That's the advantage.

If you're using a VM to run a graphical environment with software rendering in the first place, does it really matter if you get 22 FPS vs 24 FPS? No. What matters is how easy it is to get up and running.

[rene]

Exactly.

There's QEMU, libvirt, KVM, Virt Manager, … the list goes on.

These are all things that may or may not be related, but nevertheless, come up while trying to figure out how to create a VM under Linux.

With VirtualBox, you install VirtualBox and that's it. It also works on Windows, so your VMs are portable. That's the advantage.

If you're using a VM to run a graphical environment with software rendering in the first place, does it really matter if you get 22 FPS vs 24 FPS? No. What matters is how easy it is to get up and running.

I recently tried to compile VirtualBox, and OMG is that code base a clusterf*ck. Qemu: make; make install and it just works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbGmx9GgdJI

[starshipeleven]

With VirtualBox, you install VirtualBox and that's it.

There is this thing called dependencies in Linux distros. If you install Virt Manager it will pull down and install everything you need, automatically.

It also works on Windows, so your VMs are portable.

This may or may not matter, depending on usecase. If you have Windows you don't usually need a Windows VM to run Windows applications.

If you're using a VM to run a graphical environment with software rendering in the first place, does it really matter if you get 22 FPS vs 24 FPS?

The performance gap is more like "lags" and "runs smoothly" for a bunch of applications that actually use some mild 3D for their GUI.

[Unklejoe]

There is this thing called dependencies in Linux distros. If you install Virt Manager it will pull down and install everything you need, automatically.

There is this thing called: "sudo apt install virtualbox-6.0" that accomplishes the same. Just add the VirtualBox PPA.

If you have Windows you don't usually need a Windows VM to run Windows applications.

There are some scenarios where you do, like running some old Windows XP software.

[starshipeleven]

There is this thing called: "sudo apt install virtualbox-6.0" that accomplishes the same. Just add the VirtualBox PPA.

sudo apt install virt-manager
is easier, no need to install PPA either as all is in the repos.

As I said, all will be downloaded and installed automatically.

There are some scenarios where you do, like running some old Windows XP software.

Yes I know, that's why I said it depends from the usecase. In many places they make VMs because the IDE software they use is stupid bullshit and must be kept isolated to not blow up due to conflicts with other applications or slow down the PC when not in use.