The Virtual machines They have been with us for decades and more, but their use has become so common that they are used by many regular users, which, thanks to the stubbornness of some solutions, has been able to offer a simple interface and user experience that allows you to configure, run and work with virtual machines. when you only know the basics.

We will not explain in depth what virtual machines are, so we will limit ourselves to that it is a software solution that emulates the functions of a physical computer, taking as part of the resources available to the host computer. The host operating system is running on the host computer (host), which runs on a real computer, while systems running on virtual machines are considered as guests (guests guests).

In general, virtual machines run in their own environment and with their own drivers, but there are solutions such as QEMU that allow access to real physical machine resources, which allow you to run Triple Windows A games on a virtual machine, for example. machine with very good performance. Achieving this, of course, requires deep knowledge and results are not guaranteed, so unless you see it as a challenge, it would be better to have a dual boot if you have games that don’t work properly on Linux or macOS.

But in addition to the advanced things that very few people do in the home environment, virtual machines have become a great way to test or keep things running without affecting the host operating system. They add to that functions such as cloning and snapshotswhich in addition to insulation capabilities, so they are also used to deal with malware in secure environments and as a security measure. The last approach is the one used by QubesOS.

What are the best solutions to get started with virtual machines, what are the reasons to use them? In this article, we’ll mention three obvious reasons to use them and four simple virtualization solutions.

3 reasons to use virtual machines (even at home)

Easily test new operating systems

Operating system testing is the most popular reason to use virtual machines. As we have already mentioned, there are solutions that will make them very easy to get up and running and thus explore what is beyond what is installed on the host computer, which is usually Windows.

Operating system testing can be motivated by mere curiosity, the desire to learn about the features or news of each new release without compromising the real machine, or the intention to perform a possible migration because the computer used does not meet demanding requirements. Windows 11 requirements.

But in addition to virtualizing desktop-oriented operating systems, the same can be done with those that act as servers. This developers, for example, can come in handythat they can test what they are developing in a virtualized environment before deploying it to a production server. And speaking of programming, cross-platform development is also worth mentioning.

Perform tests without damaging the host system

Another reason to use virtual machines is testing without damaging host systems. In other words, instead of running another operating system, the same operating system as the actual machine would be used to perform the tests, which could be transferred to the host system if successful.

An example is what this server does when it wants to update the version of Linux it uses: Fedora Silverblue. When the new major release comes out, the first thing I will do is run the upgrade process on the virtual machine, and if the upgrade goes well and the basic components of the system work properly, I will upgrade my laptop, which is the secondary computer. When I see that a week has passed and everything is still fine, I update my production machine. Obviously, if something goes wrong on a virtual machine, I won’t update the laptop until I find the source of the failure and see if I can fix it.

Another example is testing any application or component whose installation could compromise the proper functioning of the operating system. Under these circumstances, it would be better to test on the virtual machine first before performing the procedure on the host system.

Keeping obsolete operating systems alive

Do you have a basic application for you that only works on an operating system that is no longer supported? Virtual machines are a very good solution here, as they not only keep the application running, but also provide isolation to prevent security-related disasters (although this depends on the proper configuration of the virtual machine itself). If you depend on an application that only runs on Windows XP, it would be highly recommended to transfer production to a virtual machine.

On the other hand, we have nostalgic people who find it difficult to say goodbye to some operating systems. Virtual machines are the perfect way for them to keep the systems of the past and the memories associated with them alive.

4 easy virtual machine solutions

VirtualBox

Let’s start with the most popular solution in the home environment. VirtualBox is a hypervisor, which in a very high percentage is free software and it went through several hands. It was born in InnoTek, which bought Sun Microsystems and then Sun Microsystems bought Oracle, so it has been officially distributed as Oracle VM VirtualBox for several years.

VirtualBox, which officially offers support for Windows, Linux, macOS and Solaris, excels at making it easy to create, configure, manipulate, clone, and restore virtual machines. It allows you to create environments for a large number of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, macOS (although there are obstacles), Solaris and BSD, also covering a large number of versions.

Its graphical interface is simple, well-designed and easy to understand, so it can be used by trial and error by virtually anyone who knows how to install an operating system.

Its weakness is the performance, which is not as significant in modern machines as in the past, and so there are fewer reasons to use its large rival in the segment.

VMware Workstation Player

Formerly known as VMWare Player, it is a free version of the virtualization solution from VMware, one of the best known companies in this segment.

Compared to VirtualBox, at least in the home environment, it offers top performance and is generally a more professional solution you must go through the box and transfer it to VMware Workstation Pro to get all its features. It offers installers for Windows and Linux on 64-bit x86 (Intel and AMD), but keep in mind that installing a second system on some distributions can be difficult. The fact that it is proprietary software prevents the community from helping to improve the Linux installer and its portability to other processor architectures.

VMware Workstation Player allows you to run Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD in a virtualized way. However, and although it provides things like isolation and offers good performance, it lacks some of the features such as snapshots and cloning that are in the Pro version (this is the paid version) and in the VirtualBox.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s own hypervisor for Windows Professional, Enterprise, Education and Server, with which the company intends to offer a framework for Windows, GNU / Linux and FreeBSD virtualization.

It is activated via the Windows configuration itself in a process that requires a restart. The user will then have the Hyper-V GUI available in supported editions of the desktop system through which other operating systems can be started easily. As a feature, it supports checkpoints that would be equivalent to snapshots, as well as cloning, importing and exporting virtual machines.

Due to its server orientation, it has long dragged restrictions around the sound, it does not officially support the optical drives of host machines as a gateway and, as is common with Microsoft’s flagship products, is software private.

GNOME boxes

And we close our list of simple virtualization solutions with GNOME Boxes, an application belonging to GNOME, the well-known graphical interface for Linux. It is important to note that this is not the hypervisor itself, but rather is a simple interface for QEMU / KVM. At the level of functions, it does not make a shadow of virt-manager, a very powerful interface, the use of which, however, requires at least relatively in-depth knowledge.

In other words, GNOME Boxes is not designed to provide advanced QEMU / KVM capabilities. Nevertheless, it is another available tool for Linux users to easily run operating systems on virtual machines, and it is an application that is gradually being improved. Adhering to GNOME’s design lines makes its user interface very minimalist, so you can learn to use it by trial and error.

conclusion

As we can see, there is no need to be a genius to use virtual machines these days, and even at home, it can be convenient to use to avoid the inconvenience of performing something as simple as an update, an action that has disappeared in Windows. risk sport.

They also open the door for users to perform all kinds of tests without compromising the host system, which includes applications and even alternative operating systems to which it might intend to migrate.