Ever since notepad++ underwent a supply chain attack making Windows users vulnerable, I decided to abandon Windows and use Linux instead. I am now currently running Linux as my OS and Windows as a VM, which I use for my daily tasks. This post is less of a tech support question and more of an open discussion. What are your guys’ VM setups, if you have any? What do you recommend? etc. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves and ask your own questions if you’d like.
For specifics, I am running SIlverblue as my host OS and Windows 11 as my guest OS. I am using the Gnome Boxes flatpak to run it. Thanks to the hardware I have, the VM is not too slow. But if I had anything less than I do, I probably couldn’t stand it.
On Linux youv’e got KVM built right in to the Linux Kernel. So that is typically always my first choice.
Most Linux centric virtualization graphical frontends rely on leverage KVM/QEMU under the hood (such as Gnome Boxes, Virt-Manager, Cockpit-Machines, Proxmox, and so forth)
I personally use:
Proxmox: for self-hosting things on a headless server.
Boxes: for basic simple VMs and quick testing on my desktop
Virt-manager: for anything that is even slightly off the beaten path on my desktop
The nice thing about all of these options relying on the same underlying software is that knowledge gained from using one, is often pretty transferable to the others.
I use virtual box, but I need to unload KVM otherwise the VMs won’t boot up since it’s enabled by default on Fedora. The only reason I’m using virtual box and not something else is quite literally because it’s all I ever used on Windows before I switched to Linux a few years ago. I did tinker around with virt-manager when I installed home assistant but never got too in depth with it. On that note, is there any benefit to using another hypervisor software besides virtual box?
I use Qubes OS, a “reasonably secure operating system”, that uses virtualization to achieve security. It is one of the most secure operating systems available, but definitely not for new Linux users.
Since you’re using Silverblue / Fedora Atomic, I recommend to take a look at secureblue, which builds on top of Fedora Atomic and includes many security improvements similar to those in GrapheneOS.