Recommended Virtual Machine Software

sphen said:
I will try it on a minimum server installation of Debian 12 first to see how it works. I am not concerned about sound.
Click to expand...
After a few false starts, I got it working. Installation and configuration were surprisingly easy, once I found a procedure that aligned with Debian. I was impressed with the quality and flexibility of the virtual machine manager user interface. Sounds from the nested guest operating systems were passed all the way through to the speaker.

In case anyone cares, I installed QEMU / KVM in a Debian 12 virtual machine. The VMware virtual machine that served as a host was a fresh Debian 12 installation with "hypervisor applications" enabled in its VMware settings. Once the QEMU/KVM software was installed and running, I created another Debian 12 instance as a guest inside that virtual machine. It ran perfectly, and there was sound output through the nested virtual machines. (I heard beeps and boops from the operating system UI in the guest, but did not go further.)

Where the initial installation attempts went wrong on the Debian 12 host:
I tried following the procedure in the video link from above, but ran into issues around figuring out "Debian apt" equivalents to the Pacman packages in Arch. After a couple aborted attempts, it was clear that I was off the path and headed for the weeds.

What worked for a Debian 12 host:
I used a web search to find this simple procedure that worked for my Debian 12:
https://christitus.com/vm-setup-in-linux/

I created a Debian 12 virtual machine guest using the GUI manager interface. If you have seen and used other virtual machine software, the essential options should look familiar. I was able to create a new Debian 12 guest using the .iso of the Debian 12 net installer. The guest booted the installer, connected to the internet to download the rest of the installation files, and it just worked. The guest ran very slowly, but I was pushing against RAM limitations in my host Mac to run a guest that acted as the host for its own guest.

In case it matters, the 4 real + 4 virtual core Mac has 16 Gbytes RAM. The original Debian 12 guest that served as the QEMU host was allocated 4 cores, 12 Gbytes RAM, 60 Gbytes drive. The Debian 12 nested QEMU/KVM guest was allocated 2 cores, 2 Gbytes RAM, and 20 Gbytes drive.

This work helped me make progress on a small research project I started, related to Linux installers.
 


sphen said:
After a few false starts, I got it working. Installation and configuration were surprisingly easy, once I found a procedure that aligned with Debian. I was impressed with the quality and flexibility of the virtual machine manager user interface. Sounds from the nested guest operating systems were passed all the way through to the speaker.

In case anyone cares, I installed QEMU / KVM in a Debian 12 virtual machine. The VMware virtual machine that served as a host was a fresh Debian 12 installation with "hypervisor applications" enabled in its VMware settings. Once the QEMU/KVM software was installed and running, I created another Debian 12 instance as a guest inside that virtual machine. It ran perfectly, and there was sound output through the nested virtual machines. (I heard beeps and boops from the operating system UI in the guest, but did not go further.)

Where the initial installation attempts went wrong on the Debian 12 host:
I tried following the procedure in the video link from above, but ran into issues around figuring out "Debian apt" equivalents to the Pacman packages in Arch. After a couple aborted attempts, it was clear that I was off the path and headed for the weeds.

What worked for a Debian 12 host:
I used a web search to find this simple procedure that worked for my Debian 12:
https://christitus.com/vm-setup-in-linux/

I created a Debian 12 virtual machine guest using the GUI manager interface. If you have seen and used other virtual machine software, the essential options should look familiar. I was able to create a new Debian 12 guest using the .iso of the Debian 12 net installer. The guest booted the installer, connected to the internet to download the rest of the installation files, and it just worked. The guest ran very slowly, but I was pushing against RAM limitations in my host Mac to run a guest that acted as the host for its own guest.

In case it matters, the 4 real + 4 virtual core Mac has 16 Gbytes RAM. The original Debian 12 guest that served as the QEMU host was allocated 4 cores, 12 Gbytes RAM, 60 Gbytes drive. The Debian 12 nested QEMU/KVM guest was allocated 2 cores, 2 Gbytes RAM, and 20 Gbytes drive.

This work helped me make progress on a small research project I started, related to Linux installers.
Click to expand...
So, the bare hardware was a Mac, hosting a VMWare virtual machine running Debain 12, hosting a QEMU/KVM virtual machine running Debain 12 again? Bunch uh virtual machines there, dude. I'm encouraged that QEMU/KVM was pretty straight forward to set up.
 
vs2-free-users said:
Hi,

i suggest virt-manager if you want use it more for remote virtual-machines and virtualbox then its for your workstation.
Click to expand...
I installed virt-manager as part of the installation procedure I recommended above. I launched virt-manager from the command line and used the GUI to create and configure the second (nested) Debian 12 virtual machine. I was impressed with vert-manager's user interface - the range and completeness of settings options, ease of use, and more.

malonn said:
So, the bare hardware was a Mac, hosting a VMWare virtual machine running Debain 12, hosting a QEMU/KVM virtual machine running Debain 12 again? Bunch uh virtual machines there, dude. I'm encouraged that QEMU/KVM was pretty straight forward to set up.
Click to expand...
As dumb as it seems, yes. It is a 2016 MacBook Pro running VMware Fusion, with a VMware Debian 12 guest acting as a QEMU/KVM host for a Debian 12 guest. Actually, I wanted to install something other than Debian 12 as that final guest, but the Debian net installer is small compared with the other DVD .iso files I had on hand. At that point, I was concerned about disk usage with several snaphots, etc. I copied the Debian net install .iso file to the guest/host 'cause it was "small", installed Debian 12, and here I am. I may try creating another VM today, maybe, after I delete some snapshots and shrink the VM.

My ultimate objective was to have a look at the console screen when a KVM virtual machine boots. I want a better understanding of what is displayed and "interrupt" key options, if any. I rent virtual private servers (VPS) on the internet for a few dollars a month and have been interested in Linux installation issues related to them. My secondary objective was to learn how to install and configure QEMU and KVM for myself.
. . . . . . . . . .
Off topic:
To those in the USA: Happy Independence Day!
I saw an ad for a 4th of July VPS sale, where they were offering VPSs in the UK and Germany. I wondered whether the person who wrote the ad slept through history class. My thoughts were:
-> Celebrate 4th of July with a UK VPS! Rent a small piece of the "enemy" and claim it as your own!
 
sphen said:
As dumb as it seems, yes. It is a 2016 MacBook Pro running VMware Fusion, with a VMware Debian 12 guest acting as a QEMU/KVM host for a Debian 12 guest. Actually, I wanted to install something other than Debian 12 as that final guest, but the Debian net installer is small compared with the other DVD .iso files I had on hand. At that point, I was concerned about disk usage with several snaphots, etc. I copied the Debian net install .iso file to the guest/host 'cause it was "small", installed Debian 12, and here I am. I may try creating another VM today, maybe, after I delete some snapshots and shrink the VM.

My ultimate objective was to have a look at the console screen when a KVM virtual machine boots. I want a better understanding of what is displayed and "interrupt" key options, if any. I rent virtual private servers (VPS) on the internet for a few dollars a month and have been interested in Linux installation issues related to them. My secondary objective was to learn how to install and configure QEMU and KVM for myself.
. . . . . . . . . .
Off topic:
To those in the USA: Happy Independence Day!
I saw an ad for a 4th of July VPS sale, where they were offering VPSs in the UK and Germany. I wondered whether the person who wrote the ad slept through history class. My thoughts were:
-> Celebrate 4th of July with a UK VPS! Rent a small piece of the "enemy" and claim it as your own!
Click to expand...
Hey, sounds like good stuff to me. I'm gonna run through those tuts and Fedora docs today and get a VM going. Need Windows for some things, plus I want to dabble with Arch as it's the next distro on my list to try. You said it wasn't that tough to get QEMU up and running, and you seem to be running a much more complicated setup than me.

Happy Independence Day to you. It's cool you referred to it as "Independence Day", and not 4th of July. We celebrate and honor our independence from England, not a day of the year. Some would say semantics, but it's means more to some people. I saw a post on social media re: this just this morning. The poster said words make a difference. Anywho, try and relax and have fun today.
 
Alright. I have my VM set up and Windows 10 installed. It was a cake walk—couldn't have been easier. The only hiccup was I had to restart libvirtd for virt-manager to connect to QEMU/KVM. Other than that, not even close to one problem.
 
a few things it took me a while to learn about kvm/qemu and virt-manager was installing ovmf to be able to set up uefi instead of bios boot, installing and setting up the spice user agent on the guest to share the clipboard and virt-manager's "Virtual Machine" menu item where you can take snapshots and redirect usb's (among other things).
 
Ah, I do believe you've done more than I have. I noticed I cannot pass clipboard contents to my VM. And I have no idea if it's booting via legacy BIOS or UEFI. I just followed the Fedora documentation. Spice user agent? Net search time...
 
Cool, thanks. I also noticed you can share files between host and guest with QEMU/KVM. A must for me. Virtualbox allowed that as well. Digging...
 
malonn said:
Ah, I do believe you've done more than I have. I noticed I cannot pass clipboard contents to my VM. And I have no idea if it's booting via legacy BIOS or UEFI. I just followed the Fedora documentation. Spice user agent? Net search time...
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly you have to install the "edk2-ovmf" package in order to be able to use uefi firmware on virtual machines.
Code: 
edk2-ovmf.noarch : UEFI firmware for x86_64 virtual machines
 
malonn said:
Cool, thanks. I also noticed you can share files between host and guest with QEMU/KVM. A must for me. Virtualbox allowed that as well. Digging...
Click to expand...
i was just writing my response to that part of your post. i suppose i could have waited, but i'm still not sure i have a complete answer for you since i don't use fedora. the package that usually gets installed on the guest machine (windows 10 in your case) is one called spice-vdagent. i'm not sure where you would find that.

you would install these on your system with dnf instead of downloading, but to give you a look at package names and info:

in a fedora guest (for future reference maybe), this looks like it would be the package: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/spice-vdagent/spice-vdagent/

in mint and mx linux (based on debian) there also need to be some packages installed on the host (fedora in your case). i think these might be the ones for that: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/spice/
 
No, no. You don't have to hold my hand. I appreciate all the help you have given. I was sorta just giving a running status of where I was in the process. Excessive, I guess.

The Fedora docs guided the install of (I think/hope) all optional components.
 
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