Cyberus Develops Open-Source KVM Backend For VirtualBox

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Cyberus Develops Open-Source KVM Backend For VirtualBox

Cyberus Technology announced today the open-source release of a KVM back-end developed for VirtualBox. This new back-end allows the VirtualBox VMM to run virtual machines utilizing the Linux KVM hypervisor instead of the custom kernel module relied upon by the standard Oracle VM VirtualBox software...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KVM-Backend-For-VirtualBox

[alpha_one_x86]

the need of virtualbox linux kernel modules was always a problem for me

[varikonniemi]

So what remains of virtualbox after this? I used to use it many years ago, but then when i needed to transfer hundreds of gigs of data it became painfully slow, so i migrated to KVM which doubled throughput. If virtualbox had implemented their stack properly from the get go (like this, with kvm) i probably would never had moved away and they had one more user. As of now, for me virtualbox is legacy software. Even after this improvement by cyberus.

[kpedersen]

This is actually really interesting. I have always found Qemu's interface to be a weird straddle across lightweight CLI based and the Gtk GUI. The CLI is great but the GUI is weirdly bloated for the fairly sparse feature-set it offers (A toolbar with shutdown, monitor tab and very little else...).

VirtualBox will provide a strong GUI alongside a light headless Qemu. A much better separation of functionality.

[ezst036]

This is really great news. Now it won't be a fuss to align the kernel version with the kernel module. What a pain.

Also, it's great because VirtualBox has a strong GUI for simple configuration. Trying to do anything like this on the CLI, what a pain in the neck!!! This kind of process so clearly needs a strong GUI for the task to simplify what it is that needs to be done.

However, when managing multiple VMs, clearly the CLI is the way to go. But I never do that at home. At home when just doing something simple the GUI wins and its hands down.

[avis]

the need of virtualbox linux kernel modules was always a problem for me

Third-party kernel modules have always been a problem with Linux distros. And it all got even worse with the advent of secure boot.

So what remains of virtualbox after this? I used to use it many years ago, but then when i needed to transfer hundreds of gigs of data it became painfully slow, so i migrated to KVM which doubled throughput. If virtualbox had implemented their stack properly from the get go (like this, with kvm) i probably would never had moved away and they had one more user. As of now, for me virtualbox is legacy software. Even after this improvement by cyberus.

VirtualBox existed long before KVM became a reality.

And it's vastly more useful and powerful than anything built on top of KVM.

[pabloski]

This is actually really interesting. I have always found Qemu's interface to be a weird straddle across lightweight CLI based and the Gtk GUI. The CLI is great but the GUI is weirdly bloated for the fairly sparse feature-set it offers (A toolbar with shutdown, monitor tab and very little else...).

This is why people use Virtmanager.

[pabloski]

VirtualBox existed long before KVM became a reality.

VirtualBox was originally a fork of Qemu.

And it's vastly more useful and powerful than anything built on top of KVM.

humm this sounds strange to me....virtualbox is horrible from a performance point of view, even worse than vmware!

[ssokolow]

This is why people use Virtmanager.

Unfortunately, as long as GNOME HIG is as it is, and its decisions are trickling into even parts of GTK things that don't want to be GNOME HIG-compliant (eg. the apparent inability of the Breeze-GTK3 theme to remove the buggy drop shadows from Inkscape's context menus to match every other application on my KDE desktop, including GTK2 ones), being GTK3-based is a deal-breaker.

[commodore256]

Would this help in creating Win 9x guest additions?