Virtualization software for linux?

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I daily drive Bazzite as my home computing needs are relatively simple. One thing I would love to do is have some sort of virtualization option.

I realize Bazzite has the ujust setup-virtualization but after multiple attempts the Virtual Machine Manager seems to give me permission issues during the setup of the VM.

I have currently switched to using this unofficial app image of VirtualBox. Which has been working great (for the small amount of time I have used it). I am a bit concerned thats its unofficial, although the repo owner seems to just be a guy who loves making app images.

Anyway just wanting to see what other people use or reccommend.

Sorry if there is already a related thread, mods can feel free to lock or merge.

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There is the gnome Boxes flatpak, if you don’t need much customization https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.gnome.Boxes

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I actually tried boxes (and it worked) but I had issues with creating a Windows VM where the windows setup did not think the VM met the hardware security requirments. I guess I could remove the requirments ahead of time via something like rufus (although i dont know what the linux alternative to that tool is :sweat_smile: )

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Is your issue related to this?

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I don’t think its apple to apples what my issue was but the solution user FrederikSchack offered seems worth trying.

  1. First be sure to run “ujust setup-virtualization” and choose the menu point that adds your user to libvirt, this can’t be done form the command prompt.
  2. I made a folder in my home folder that I also gave libvirt group permissions to access.
  3. Make a flatpak override:

flatpak override --user --filesystem=[folder] org.virt_manager.virt-manager

Then log out and log in again.

I don’t think I would be willing to go as far as the OP in that thread in terms of making it work

removed the Flatpak version and layered the native RPM version of virt-manager, moved the ISO to /var/lib/libvirt/images so QEMU has no excuse, even disabled SELinux entirely

that seems worse then using the unofficial virtualbox app.

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Sounds like that possibly relates to trying to run Windows without a vTPM (doesn’t Windows 11 require a TPM?)

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Yeah I think thats the exact issue. From what I can tell I would need to manually configure vTPM to use Boxes as there is no support for it in the GUI. From browsing around I havent been able to find clear instructions and its not something I would trust an LLM to show me accurately.

EDIT:

It does look like this blog provides instructions

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I know that the software underlying Boxes supports adding a vTPM, but I’m not sure how easy or difficult it is to do from Boxes.

If you have the option, you might be better off using virt-manager, or not using a GUI frontend at all. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to add a vTPM using the virt-manager GUI.

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Yeah that was my first preference as ujust setup-virtualization is supposed to set that up properly in Bazzite but it did not seem to work. I have yet to try the solution mentioned in the thread @Anvil linked.

Yeah i think it does, I think its a matter of editing the xml config which the blog post I linked in my edit has steps to do.

My current solution has been working and, did not require all these seemingly extra steps to get working. Which has slowed my momentum a bit in switching to one of these alternatives.

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See also:

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I would go with QEMU and Virt-manager.
It gives you a not so hardcore GUI to install, start, modify your VMs, while you have many freedoms for modifications.

And please switch from VirtualBox to QEMU.
QEMU is by far the faster, more secure and better Hypervisor.

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…and not owned by Oracle, most importantly. :slight_smile:

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Yeah I will give it another go this week. To be fair, VirtualBox was my third choice :sweat_smile:

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Since you’re on Bazzite, sticking with KVM/QEMU (via Virt-manager) really is the “native” way to go. Once it’s set up, the disk I/O and CPU overhead are significantly lower than VirtualBox because it’s baked into the kernel.

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I’m currently using Bluefin, Bazzite’s more workstation oriented sibling. I did not personally have any issues getting virtualization setup (I’m messing around with Fedora-Cosmic in virt-manager right now). So it should be at least possible for you with Bazzite. Do you recall what the permissions issues you encountered were related to?

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In 2026, the landscape of Linux virtualization is divided into two main categories: Type-1 (Bare Metal), where the software acts as the OS itself, and Type-2 (Hosted), which runs like a standard application on your existing Linux desktop

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Unable to complete install: 'Cannot access storage file 'path/to/drive/win11.qcow2' (as uid:107, gid:107): Permission denied'

I have tried doing the faltpak override, changing the group of the location and its permissions.

EDIT: Just to add more context, it seems like this issue is only occuring because I am trying to create the VM on a secoundary drive. Seems to work fine, in testing, if I create the VM on the main drive.

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Adding an update in case someone else is looking to do this.

I was able to get virt manager to setup the VM on a seperate drive which required a few extra steps…

  • Creating VM storage directory on my seperate drive
  • Creating an Accessible Directory for QEMU
  • Bind Mount for Permission Access
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