Saturday, March 14, 2026

virt-manager (Virtual Machine Manager) for modern Linux installs

virt-manager:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virt-manager
"virt-manager is a desktop virtual machine monitor primarily developed by Red Hat."

"Virt-manager allows users to:
  •     create, edit, start and stop VMs
  •     view and control each VM's console
  •     see performance and utilization statistics for each VM
  •     view all running VMs and hosts, and their live performance or resource utilization statistics.
  •     use KVM, Xen or QEMU virtual machines, running either locally or remotely.
  •     use LXC containers
Support for FreeBSD's bhyve hypervisor has been included since 2014, though it remains disabled by default."

Manage virtual machines with virt-manager:  https://virt-manager.org/
"The virt-manager application is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines through libvirt. It primarily targets KVM VMs, but also manages Xen and LXC (linux containers). It presents a summary view of running domains, their live performance & resource utilization statistics. Wizards enable the creation of new domains, and configuration & adjustment of a domain's resource allocation & virtual hardware. An embedded VNC and SPICE client viewer presents a full graphical console to the guest domain."

"About virt-manager's supporting tools -
  • virt-install is a command line tool which provides an easy way to provision operating systems into virtual machines.
  • virt-viewer is a lightweight UI interface for interacting with the graphical display of virtualized guest OS. It can display VNC or SPICE, and uses libvirt to lookup the graphical connection details.
  • virt-clone is a command line tool for cloning existing inactive guests. It copies the disk images, and defines a config with new name, UUID and MAC address pointing to the copied disks.
  • virt-xml is a command line tool for easily editing libvirt domain XML using virt-install's command line options.
  • virt-bootstrap is a command line tool providing an easy way to setup the root file system for libvirt-based containers."

virt-manager / virt-manager: https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager

Install virt-manager (Ubuntu): https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/how-to/virtualisation/virtual-machine-manager/
Includes instructions for the tools mentioned above, along with some usage tips.

Installing Virt-Manager on Ubuntu: A Comprehensive Guide: https://linuxvox.com/blog/install-virt-manager-ubuntu/
"This blog post will guide you through the process of installing Virt-Manager on an Ubuntu system, explain its usage, common practices, and best practices" (including adding your user to the relevant groups).

"Why Use Virt-Manager?
  • Graphical Interface: It offers an intuitive graphical interface, which is easier to use compared to command-line tools for those new to virtualization.
  • Multi-Hypervisor Support: Supports multiple hypervisors, allowing you to manage different types of virtual machines from a single interface.
  • Full-Featured Management: You can perform a wide range of tasks, including creating new VMs, configuring hardware, and monitoring performance."

Kernel Virtual Machine  (KVM) is part of most modern Linux installations (it's dormant until needed):  https://linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
" KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko.
Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc. "
Virt Tools - Blogging about open source virtualization: https://planet.virt-tools.org/

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