VirtualBox is ridiculously simple to set up and get virtual machines going. Shared folders, shared clipboard and much more are no issue.

But.

It eats resources. The installed virtual machines (VM) run relatively slow. What have you found to be feature comparable - and most importantly more resource-efficient - alternatives for running VMs under Linux?

  • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    Virtualbox should not run slowly in terms of compute. Make sure your allocating enough cores and memory, and VT/AMD-V is enabled in the BIOS of the host. Also Guest additions should be installed. Not sure but that might help IO speeds.

    What might be slow, Graphics may not be acceralerated. Exactly what VM software to use, what it works with, and actually getting it to work can be challanging. Installing guest drivers though is probably required.

    For Linux KVM solutions are probably preferred and more native solution but more technical to use. Getting graphics acceleration with KVM has been challenging, though may be possible. KVM is used widely on servers, but is not that desktop friendly.

    All VM solutions are resource intensive. Use containers and/or native software to reduce/avoid that.

    Edit: I myself have used VirtualBox but these days I use KVM including on my workstation.