What is Reddit's opinion of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)?

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That is a pretty cool service actually. By all means, once you're comfortable, a nice thing to do is set up a VM on your own machine, running the same distribution you're learning on. To this end, KVM is useful and not too difficult to get running.

This way you can futz around without impacting your actual (host) system. It is also a way to check out other distributions, operating systems, and so on.

You can even build VMs and put them into production, using them as you would standard silicon.

One way I've used this is to run Gentoo on a VM. I can do things like run all sorts of crazy unstable stuff I wouldn't want to do on my main system. Once I get comfortable with it, I can take what I learn and possibly use what I learned on my main system.

1. get a good intel based server board that supports a bunch of ram: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=302&Tpk=server%20motherboard I always liked SuperMicro

2. choose a vm: kvm, xen, vmware, virtualbox. I always tend to fallback onto http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page . It's based on qemu and it haven't ceased to surprise me yet. I like the flexibility of kvm but it's mostly common line based.

3. create a ramdisk. I tried a bunch of different ones, but tmpfs seems to be the way to go for me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs

4. then just create the vm and copy it to the tmpfs mount

If you don't need a fancy GUI control panel (though you still see the VM screen in a popup window) you can always just install kvm/qemu and do something like:

qemu-kvm -cdrom /home/user/newdistro.iso

To create a virtual HDD, it's as easy as:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 newdistro.qcow2 20G

For a 20GB virtual HDD (the file itself will expand as you write to the virtual disk, so it won't be a 20GB file right away).

and if you want to use that virtual HDD in a VM:

qemu-kvm -hda /home/user/newdistro.qcow2 -cdrom /home/user/newdistro.iso -boot b

Install the distro to the virtual disk then:

qemu-kvm -hda /home/user/newdistro.qcow2 -cdrom /home/user/newdistro.iso -boot a

To boot the VM from the virtual HDD while keeping the liveCD 'in the tray'.

Of course, there are plenty more switches for allocating resources, networking etc but I find that these four lines are perfectly adequate for playing with new distros. KVM works on both clients and servers, is supported by Red Hat and has plenty documentation here.

Well yeah, you can run its own vm with its own kernel like kvm or Virtual box; both pre-dated Docker. Each way has its advantage but you wouldn't hear about them.

Which is exactly why every time I hear anyone praise docker as the latest and greatest I usually assume they aren't well versed in technology. No ofense to you, of course, but it's far more complicated than just browsing web-scale DOT com and read the headlines.

Perhaps QEMU could be what you are looking for? Quoting from their website:

> When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU.

Edit: After some search, it seems that best result would come from KVM with VGA passthrough, as SxxxX has said.

I've been mostly pleased with mine (i7 gazelle, maxed out).

I've had the following complaints (mostly aesthetic, but one technical):

• The System76 stickers on the top didn't stay, and within a week of purchase the "e" started pealing off- see this and this. I reported it to System76, they said they were sending me a replacement sticker but then never did. That was months ago, and I gave up (my "e" fell off entirely, it now looks horrible, and I plan on just pealing the rest off at some point if I can do it cleanly).
• The case is very easily scuffed, you really have to take extra special care if you don't want marks. Simply putting it in and taking it out of my padded laptop case causes scuff marks. This combined with the last makes it not quite the belle of the ball when I take it out (when I first got it, was out with a friend who had a Mac and he was terribly impressed with the look of my laptop.. unfortunately, that only lasted a week- once the scuffs started showing up and the one sticker fell off my laptop started looking less and less impressive).
• They use JMicron ethernet adapter in it. I realize this is likely out of their hands (they get the laptops from a Chinese manufacturer IIRC) but it causes problems because the adapter's working drivers aren't in the mainstream kernel. This means if you deviate from the stock System76 install (I use Kubuntu) then you likely have to build the drivers yourself. I'm fine doing that, truth be told, but from a practical standpoint I really shouldn't have to do that if I'm paying specifically for a Linux laptop.

Other than these, I really do love the laptop. In fact, it's my favorite laptop and second favorite computer buy ever (my favorite computer buy was the KVM server I recently built- i7, 32 GB RAM, 4 TB striped HDD, with VTx/VTd support... man that is one killer KVM machine!)

You want Type 1 virtualization. Try open source Type 1 virtualization in your search engine.

As others have said, Proxmox. I think that would be a good choice. Other options: Xen KVM. There are also expensive enterprise solutions from Oracle, VMWare, & Citrix.

Best/simplest/fastest is so subjective. Plus they are usually (or can be) mutually exclusive. For example, python is a pretty simple programming language, C is an extremely fast programming language (runtime)....which one is the best? It depends.

late but I dont give a fuck, actually there is a way to keep your whole library and using the Adobe Suite and what-not without needing to dual-boot! Through the power of VM's (Virtual Machines), you can effectively, with the right hard ware, pass-through your graphics card to use it in the VM allowing you to run games and graphic heavy programs at near native performance. Also, Windows actually runs better in a VM than running it on bare metal. So you can effectively have the flexebility and lightweight-ness[?] of linux and also run the games you cant run on linux inside a VM at native performance and without ever needing to worry about BSOD's or Viruses. Link My favorite VM on Linux

if you look at something like KVM (the software, not a physical devise; http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page) you can make VMs that have metal access to the GPU.

in a setup like unraid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4qDdf-fX60), you can use that plus steam streaming and near identical performance as a full metal OS install.

If VMware offers software products under a license to which it has no right to do so in Canada, then they face legal liability for doing so.

I'm not sure if it's bare-metal, but I think KVM might be it (note: I have no idea how compliant they are with the GPL). See here: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page

I'm unaware of any such cases.

Yes it works the same, and I believe redhat qemu/kvm is the best resource, this here http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page and the ArchLinux wiki.

I found the GUI frontend aqemu to be really fine, as fine as VirtualBox graphical frontend.

For security I recommend to run Alpine Linux as guest.

KVM is the Kernel-based Virtual Machine, and hypervisor integrated into the Linux kernel since 2.6.20. It can be used as the building block for many Linux/Virtualization technologies, including OpenStack.