Arch Linux’s Virtualization: KVM
Virtualization has become a common place nowadays. VMWare’s VM Player, Oracle’s Virtualbox, Parallels Desktop for Mac and Microsoft’s Hyper-V are packages easy to install that transform our simple computers into machines capable of running almost every type of OS available today and from a somewhat distant past. All the above hypervisors are equally capable, equally easy to install, equally functional. But if your main OS is Linux, there is another solution: KVM.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine is a virtualization module available in the Linux kernel since 2007 that requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions available. Unlike the above hypervisors, KVM is a type-1 hypervisor (see wikipedia article about hypervisors) and that translates into performance (see Phoronix benchmark articles).
Since it’s Open Source and is available in Linux’s modern distros, why not give it a try and compare to your actual hypervisor?
KVM with Gnome
Gnome has a simple GUI for KVM called Boxes. Installing it should get all dependencies installed and services running. If you’re after a more minimal and customized experience, follow along the next item.
