My Change From VirtualBox to QEMU+KVM and Virt Manager

In this video I will be discussing my Virtual Machine habits in that I have changed from VirtualBox to using QEMU+KVM & Virt Manager (Virtual Machine Manager) all was running well while using the defaults until I decided to point Virt Manager to my external USB Dock, my external hard drive already accommodates all my VirtualBox VMs, so I decided to make another folder called virt-manager and create all the Virt Manager VMs into this folder, that way I could continue to use VirtualBox until I become very familiar with Virt Manager. Unfortunately pointing virt manager to the folder on the external hard drive was not as easy as expected, due to my lack of knowledge and while getting very frustrated with the process I managed to delete all my VirtualBox VMs Ooooops Lol, on the positive side after formatting the external hard drive I was successful in pointing virt manager to the external hard drive and all seems to be working as expected, it hasn't taken me too long to familiarise myself with the workings of Virt Manager. Hope you enjoy the video.

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Awesome Audio Podcast

Colin Brash

[Doriandotslash]

Hey Colin! Nice to see you changing over :) A few things here with regards to your comments. Virt-Manager is just a graphical front-end for QEMU. You can run QEMU from the terminal by typing it all out, but virt-manager does all this for you and keeps things organized. KVM is simply what QEMU uses to interact with your host's kernel more directly to maximize performance.

You can indeed access all the VM's settings afterwards by clicking the "Info" icon when you open the VM's window. But in order to change the VM's chipset and firmware, you have to do this when the VM is first created, and it cannot be changed afterwards. If you want to add another disk, you can do this in the VM's settings by clicking the "Add Hardware" button at the bottom of the list and add another virtual disk. But, if your initial virtual disk is large enough, you can also partition it out so that the one disk is split up into smaller partitions in the same way you would on a real disk.

Permissions prompts can be removed by adding your user to the libvirt group as the other comment mentioned.

By the way, you can also recover deleted files with testdisk to get all your VM's back if you want to :)

[tuxpowerpc]

I have used Virt Manager on and off, more off as it seems to be very finicky, but when it works, it works well. Personally I don't use a VM enough to go through all this effort. I do however love Vmware Worskstation Pro. That works very well on Linux and very seamlessly. I must admit, I do not currently have it loaded on my daily driver, but again, not using a VM much these days. Thanks Colin for the great video. I miss hanging with you my friend!

[BrucesWorldofStuff]

Well mate, I feel your pain... I have done the same thing but with my movies... Lucky I had some of them on another drive...
So Vert Manager rabbit hole we go! Look forward to a follow up video to see how its going!
Good luck and keep the BFH away from the computers! :-) LOL
Thanks for the video!
LLAP

[BrucesWorldofStuff]

Just went and watched DorianDotSlash video. It was very well done. HaHaHa he sure made it look easy...
I have no VM's on this new install of EndeavourOS as Peppermint took a dive. I still have the VM's just have not reloaded Vbox...
Might give it a go soon... Been doing stuff outside as it is spring here in Indiana and the damn grass is growing already... LolLolLolLol
Later you dual booter! :-)
LLAP

[C]

I like to use "shared" folders in the windows guest and to be honest, I haven't got a clue how to accomplish this in virt-manager.
But besides the "shared" folders issue I have, it is fast and responsive, it is faster than virtualbox, thats for sure.
In virtualbox I had sometimes issues with typing in terminal in the guest os. I would type something and it would take a second before it actually happened.
In virt-manager everything runs smooth and no typing issues or glitches
But great that you are trying out virt-manager! cheers!

Note: Gnome-Boxes is also a frontend to qemu/kvm but you can't do much with settings in gnome-boxes. I mean there are almost no settings to change, Virt-manager is the better option for changing settings to your liking.

[KentsTechWorld]

You are living up to your name Mr replace :P
Nothing wrong with dual booting if that's what you need then that's what you do :) anything else if filthy fanboyism :D
Virt manager is just a GUI tool for QEMU and KVM, so that's why you need them :)

[OldMatesBackyardTech]

g'day fella. Good to see you have moved on. I can not stand VirtBox

[sleepyeyesvince]

Is losing your VMs what the kids these days call a big oof? Also, am I the only one who reads QEMU as "Queer Emu"? :)
I've had a couple of false starts myself with virt-manager and been watching a few videos on it, when yours popped up. Still haven't quite moved to it from VBox, but this might serve as further encouragement. Thanks mate!

[musicalneptunian]

What I would like to do in Ubuntu which is my host daily driver, is to sort out my printer issues. I have a HP printer and I have tried everything with the hplib tool. Nothing has got the printer to work. If I ran an earlier version of ubuntu [where the printer did work] in QEMU could I get that to work my printer? I have asked about this in the QEMU mailing list and I got no response. Yawn. Mailing lists are useless. [note that I don't dual boot anymore because I don't want to].

[thegeriatric]

Sorry Colin I "virtually" don't do anything other than clean installs. A distro hoppers nightmare!! lol. :)

[Randomizermx]

I was never able to make QEMU work so I gave up. Virtualbox seems to be the easiest of them all to use.

[clauzone]

:-) I heard "jewel booty" and was like what??? Rewind -> Dual booting - oooohhhh