VMware Workstation Shifting From Proprietary Code To Using Upstream KVM

[richardm317]

This is kind of a big deal for me. I've been circulating amongst hypervisors and OSs trying to find the best overall combination for my mixed homelab workload for both the backend server and on my desktop. The server is currently ESXi and I've no plans to change that. On my desktop this could be what finally allows me to ditch Windows for good.

Libvirt, virt-manager, and QEMU are annoying but OK. The jank lies inside the Windows VMs with flaky virtio components and even flakier Spice components. If this new KVM overlord for VMware Workstation permits the use of VMware Tools including vmxnet3, vmmouse, vmmemctl, pvscsi, et al and the host integration features -- drive sharing, clipboard, desktop resolution re-sizing on-the-fly -- are stable and reliable then I, for one, welcome it.

As it stands today there's just too much screwing around required to obtain a solid desktop virtualization experience on Linux.

That said, I wasn't aware of the Cyberus vbox fork and I plan to look into this ASAP.

[JPFSanders]

More mindless "bloated" garbage.

Enterprise users have no fucking time to toy with the command line just to spin up, modify or manage a VM. If every damn option and the kitchen sink is not included in the graphical manager interface, it's useless garbage. End of story.

You haven't worked on an Enterprise environment. When things go south (which they do from time to time) where do you think the troubleshooting/fix is done?

[nanonyme]

"VMWare backdoor".... I thought the Kernel didn't allow APIs that didn't have an OpenSource implementation.

Seems like these days the kernel is just a pipe between a closed-source firmware blob and a closed-source userspace blob.

The very word backdoor should make a maintainer go on defense. Can this be used to create rootkits assuming local access to machine?

[JPFSanders]

Enterprise user here and I did use the CLI for managing my VMs while I was the admin of the KVM hypervisor hosts.
I vastly prefer to copy and paste the CLI command from the company wiki then to go over screenshots and follow the click trail. CLI also makes automation a lot easier.

Exactly. People who are clueless about KVM, libvirt, virsh, VMM don't understand how versatile and powerful the VM infrastructure on Linux are. At a personal level and in non-complex environments (complex = large virtualisation cluster) there is no need whatsoever to use any proprietary tool to set-up and manage virtual machines.

VMM > Virtualbox, never used vmware workstation, when I need to move a machine from KVM to vmware or vice-versa a couple of commands do the conversion job just fine.

[Quackdoc]

Exactly. People who are clueless about KVM, libvirt, virsh, VMM don't understand how versatile and powerful the VM infrastructure on Linux are. At a personal level and in non-complex environments (complex = large virtualisation cluster) there is no need whatsoever to use any proprietary tool to set-up and manage virtual machines.

VMM > Virtualbox, never used vmware workstation, when I need to move a machine from KVM to vmware or vice-versa a couple of commands do the conversion job just fine.

libvirt is dumb though for instance qemu has a lot of flexibility that libirt strips away, for instance in qemu gl can be on, off, es. libvirt can only handle that as a boolean. also what is VMM in this case? vmm typically means virtual machine monitor or virtual machine manager, it's a generic term. and even for more "enterprise" like stuff, outside of cloud hypervisor, pretty much everyone else major has died off haven't they? Maybe ovirt is still kicking around.

[slalomsk8er]

also what is VMM in this case?

https://virt-manager.org/ is my guess

[Sethox]

Enterprise users have no fucking time to toy with the command line just to spin up, modify or manage a VM. If every damn option and the kitchen sink is not included in the graphical manager interface, it's useless garbage. End of story.

True, but a good user tend to the minor details to become greater at it's job. Which is why a user documents and learn those minor details in what ever documentation/support exists to manage their systems in a better way.
Time is just another thing users have to manage and plan for, just like any other resource.

[Quackdoc]

https://virt-manager.org/ is my guess

that's only one m tho

[SteamPunker]

Nice! Now Oracle just needs to start advancing the VirtualBox KVM backend from Cyberus and ditch the existing one.

Indeed! Now that even VMware is embracing KVM, that leaves upstream VirtualBox as the odd man out. VirtualBox already switched WHPX on Windows hosts and to HVF on macOS hosts, so it really makes no sense that they continue to cling to their proprietary hypervisor, which requires and out-of-tree kernel module that taints the kernel.

It's cool that Cyberus forked VirtualBox to add support for this, but why is Oracle continuing with such boneheaded policies? Oracle gonna Oracle, I supposed.

Does anybody here have any idea if the VirtualBox proprietary hypervisor core still has any relevant advantages over KVM?

[slalomsk8er]

that's only one m tho

Have a look at the top left of the site:

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