When Apple Silicon client? WHEN!?
VirtualBox KVM Public Release
111–120 of 205 posts
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#112What does this give me that I don't already get from KVM and virt-manager on Linux? Not getting it.
I virtualize most of my desktop environment. I wanted to go with KVM and virt-manager initially, since I'm mostly using a Linux host and Linux guests, but there were two important features I wanted and couldn't figure out how to get that way: encryption and portability.
Most of the VMs are encrypted, so I feel safe traveling with them. Various secrets are also encrypted, but the encryption of the VMs themselves mean that I don't have to worry about losing my device at an airport and someone else potentially getting access to things they shouldn't. There are schemes that make this work in virt-manager and KVM, but I didn't like any of them as much; I didn't want to rely on the host for filesystem-level encryption (see portability), and I have previously had a bit of trouble with full disk encryption, so I wasn't comfortable relying on that. VirtualBox essentially is also doing full disk encryption, but it's invisible to the guest and seems to be reliable.
For portability, I should be able to use https://www.vbox.me/ to install the VMs and a host onto a flash drive and be able to run any of my environments from any Windows host without additional installations. Haven't actually tried this yet (happily, I no longer have easy access to Windows machines!), but it was a big point in favor.
Most of my environments now get auto-configured through Vagrant: https://github.com/robsheldon/vagrantfiles, so I get some of the benefits of virt-manager that way.
I really don't love relying on Oracle for anything
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#113Why? How does this generate revenue for CyberusTech? What is the long term goal?
Those are good questions. I don’t understand why you were downvoted.
To answer: We are offering service contracts and contract engineering services around virtualization, KVM and a couple of other topics.
The long term goal for this specific project is to support the security goals our customers have and to enable a couple of KVM features in Virtualbox as well. We plan to keep this updated with upstream Virtualbox and KVM.
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#114Practical thing is not having to recompile 3rd party drivers (vbox ko) every time kernel gets upgraded. Tho DKMS tries to take care of that without admin intervention, it's not always bug free. On the other side VirtualBox the software application is designed to integrate with the desktop well, VNCing into the guest is not an alternative to this. I hope efforts will be made in FreeBSD world too against its bhyve hype…
Doing this for FreeBSD would be a great project. Unfortunately it is also big enough that we couldn’t afford to do it without some kind of funding.
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#115Finally! Every time I need to run a virtual machine, I choose libvirt because it's more performant and easy to deal with than Virtualbox (no kernel module, etc.), but the GUI choices are pretty terrible. The "best" libvirt GUI is virt-manager and it's very, very buggy and lacking features (i.e. doesn't play nice with HiDPI screens, no way of configuring IPv6, etc.) Many times I have caved and chosen VirtualBox simply…
Have you tried Gnome Boxes?
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#116This is awesome and great news, thanks a ton!
The biggest issue however is that many Linux distros just refuse to build and distribute VBox kernel modules despite them being open source. Thank you for your work regardless.
Do you intend VirtualBox to pick up your work and integrate it? I'm really looking forward to it. Have you already talked to the company?
I really don't want this to be a one off work to potentially become decrepit and unusable going forward.
Secondly, some VBox features belong to a separate closed source extension pack: USB2/3 support, PXE boot, VM disk encryption, webcam/camera support.
Will they work with KVM VirtualBox after installing the pack?
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no real connection to UML here. Hardware virtualization (Intel VT, AMD-V) are much faster in practice and also don't require the guest operating system to be heavily modified. So besides as curiosity or test vehicle, approaches like UML are pretty dead.
Thanks. So, slow as it may be, the win for UML (which seems to still have a heartbeat) is that it can run on uP without any specific virtualisation capabilities, right? If I could run Linux on a Z80/6502 then in theory I could run a virtualised Linux on a Z80/6502.
Yes - plus the original win of UML was also being able to run virtual instances on a kernel without proper virtualization capabilities.
In the early 2000s people used to use UMLs as a hosting platform - they didn't have the same security isolation as a proper VM (or even, necessarily, of a container) though.
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#118This is awesome and great news, thanks a ton! The biggest issue however is that many Linux distros just refuse to build and distribute VBox kernel modules despite them being open source. Thank you for your work regardless. Do you intend VirtualBox to pick up your work and integrate it? I'm really looking forward to it. Have you already talked to the company? I really don't want this to be a one off work to potentiall…
Thanks. You can indeed use the extension pack with KVM Virtualbox, just make sure that you don't violate any license agreements.
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#119Finally! Every time I need to run a virtual machine, I choose libvirt because it's more performant and easy to deal with than Virtualbox (no kernel module, etc.), but the GUI choices are pretty terrible. The "best" libvirt GUI is virt-manager and it's very, very buggy and lacking features (i.e. doesn't play nice with HiDPI screens, no way of configuring IPv6, etc.) Many times I have caved and chosen VirtualBox simply…
virt-manager plays fine with hidpi on Wayland. On the opposite side, VirtualBox’s GUI is super buggy in Wayland. It’s basically the opposite for both. I use virt-manager because the GUI is simpler (and setting up virtualbox is a nightmare anyway). Regardless, this feature is a step in the right direction. I’m wondering if distributions will pick it up or if it will ever be integrated upstream.
That's a very recent change to virt-manager, so recent it's on nixos-unstable, but not on nixos-23.11. So it might be in Fedora 39 and some rolling-release distros... and nowhere else.
Re: VirtualBox KVM Public Release
#120Finally! Every time I need to run a virtual machine, I choose libvirt because it's more performant and easy to deal with than Virtualbox (no kernel module, etc.), but the GUI choices are pretty terrible. The "best" libvirt GUI is virt-manager and it's very, very buggy and lacking features (i.e. doesn't play nice with HiDPI screens, no way of configuring IPv6, etc.) Many times I have caved and chosen VirtualBox simply…
Have you tried Gnome Boxes?
I have, it is very limited compared to Virtual Box.