What is the best hypervisor to run virtual machines?

Ask Fedora
, ,
1

What is the best hypervisor to run virtual machines?

I have never used a virtual machine, however I would like to start and learn how to use a hypervisor to use virtual machines, so I would appreciate it if you could give me your recommendations based on your experience and knowledge, taking into account that which may be the best hypervisor depends on the context. , I leave you some details about my PC and what I will use it for:

1. I have an ASUS laptop with an AMD processor with integrated graphics and 12GB of RAM

2. The use I will give it is simply to test and use some tools in different Linux distributions, from time to time install Windows to use some exclusive tool there

1 Like
2

My personal pick is GNOME Boxes (through Flatpak). It’s great for both beginners and experts alike, it just won’t give you a ton of options to work with.

1 Like
3

This is a multi-component setup:

  • KVM/QEMU - hypervisor providing full virtualization, preinstalled on Fedora, relies on the hardware virtualization support which is built-in in the CPU and needs to be explicitly enabled in BIOS.
  • LXC - container based virtualization system, can be installed as an optional component.
  • libvirt - service component for KVM/QEMU and LXC, preinstalled on Fedora, provides an API to manage virtual storage pools, virtual networks, VMs and containers.
  • virt-manager - client interface for libvirt, can be installed as an optional component, provides the most complete access to the libvirt API, allows using both system and session modes, supports multiple connections including KVM/QEMU and LXC.
  • GNOME Boxes - client interface for libvirt, preinstalled on Fedora, provides basic functionality to manage VMs.
3 Likes
4

I use libvirt and virt-manager for all mine. It is full featured and seems to work well for me – and is also fully provided by fedora.

Another alternative is VirtualBox which is fully available from rpmfusion and already packaged for fedora; or with a little more work directly from oracle…

2 Likes
5

I already installed the tools with the command sudo dnf install @virtualization , now what should I do to configure and create a virtual machine, since this is the first time I’m doing this I don’t really know what I should do, so I would greatly appreciate any kind of help

6 
# Join the libvirt group
sudo usermod -a -G libvirt ${USER}

# Check host capabilities
sudo virt-host-validate

# Connect to libvirt session mode
virt-manager -c qemu:///session
1 Like
7

there are 2 type of virtualization type 1 and type 2
it depends on how you want your system to be like if you want your system to be like a headless server in that case you should go with type 1 and you already have many good suggestions i am adding to that list and i think it is better than other option if you don’t have a good virtualization knowledge still want type 1 go with https://www.proxmox.com/en/
if you want type 2 best is kvm base gnome box, virt manager or virtualbox are the best options.
for proxmox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j0Zb6x_hOk&list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo

1 Like
8

The third command @vgaetera posted will open the virt-manager.
File > new Virtual Machine lets you create a new one.
The first Machine I mostly make on a fresh install is, to start just ISO files without any storage attached (just selecting the ISO file).

It is also a good way see/explore what kind of settings you can make afterwards in the specific machine.

Keep in mind that the default storage will be in your home drive something like:
/home/username/.local/share/libvirt/images

Here a tutorial with images:

9

Gnome Boxes is pre-installed in Fedora, so for the first steps, you don’t need to install anything else.