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I will not invent a bicycle and retell others. I'd rather suggest you read an article from Linux Format magazine. In which experts made a comparative review of five popular virtual machines in the hope of finding the very, the best virtual machine. By the way, I highly recommend subscribing to the magazine for those who renounced and managed to escape from the captivity of Windows.
Best Virtual Machine for carding
Content
- What is a virtual machine
- Why do you need a virtual machine
- How We Tested Virtual Machines
- Performance
- Functionality
- Compatibility and snapshots
- Desktop integration
- Graphics acceleration
- Verdict
What is a virtual machine
In simple terms, without tediousness, then a virtual machine is an operating system in an operating system.
Why do I need a virtual machine
In our case, a virtual machine is primarily a platform for checking programs. Among which, as you understand, there may be malicious ones. Another virtual machine is used by hackers to test their own and others' Trojans, rat programs and other miracle files. Whichever group you belong to, you will still be interested in learning more about virtual machines and how they work.
How we tested virtual machines
First, we took a dual-core machine (due to budget constraints) with fresh Arc Linux. In addition to proprietary VMware (version 7.1.0 of Player and a 30-day trial period of Workstation 11), we used the official Arch packages, which closely follow the developer releases. Each machine had 2 GB of system RAM and 128 MB of video memory (256 MB if necessary).
We tested each candidate on a different guest OS: Mint 17.1 and Kubuntu 15.04 beta, as well as a different non-Linux OS called Windows. To measure performance, we compiled the main Mint core, ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, and played different games from our Steam library. To test the actual options, we ran them on an 8-core machine with 16GB of RAM and a 4GB Nvidia GTX, but then we were forced to return it.
Virtualization technology has fundamentally changed the computing landscape. We'd be embarrassed to say that this is a new invention (early mainframes used it as a means of providing resources), but ten-year-old CPU innovations mean that you can only achieve near-native performance with x86 code. And now we manage to cram dozens of machines (easily copied and restored) into one building, and the work of data centers has become much more efficient. It is also possible to simulate another architecture, say, ARM, which is convenient for embedded developers.
It's also a boon for casual users: getting to know a new OS doesn't have to be such a time-consuming exercise in constant fear of ruining your system. Even if you just want to test a new program, it's much safer to do it in a virtual machine instead of risking your current setup. Support for in-kernel virtualization (via KVM) and the Qemu emulator means Linux users no longer need to resort to proprietary tools.
In the olden days, Sun's VirtualBox (once owned by Innotek and now Oracle) was the only real option. But times have changed, so let's look at other virtualization applications as well.
Both VMware and VirtualBox use kernel-dependent modules that load to do their magic. VMware will need to compile them, which will require installing the kernel header packages and all the compiler hardware. You will then get an init script to load the specified modules, although it will be useless for Systemd users. If that's the case, you might want to create your own init file instead of running this script as root all the time (or seeing all the same error messages). At the time of this writing, the 3.19 series kernels required patching the VMware sources, but I hope this will be fixed by the time the magazine is published. VirtualBox packages are available in most distributions, and if you have a standard kernel you don't have to worry about anything.
Virt-Manager requires the libvirtd service to be running on your system before starting it, which will notify you with a kind message, and if you are using a fully functional desktop environment, it will do it for you; all you have to do is enter the root password.
Both VirtualBox and VMware Workstation are pretty straightforward, unless you want to be distracted by every option. However, VMware Player does not have that many options, and you will very quickly get your machine up and running. But if you're determined to make the most of these options, you'll need to install Guest Additions.
Linux Guest Additions for VirtualBox are much easier to install (the CD will start automatically) than VMware add-ons that require copying programs from an imaginary CD, changing permissions, and then running a script. Is it really 1999? But, having done all this, you will be rewarded with improved graphics and a number of additional features, which we will discuss next.
The easiest to use in our collection is Boxes, even if it only provides the bare minimum of Qemu / libvirt functions. VMware Player and VirtualBox come in second, followed by their paid rival (nominally, they are more difficult due to more options). Virt-Manager isn't particularly difficult to use, but it has enough of Qemu's maze of settings to overwhelm a newbie. In addition, the mechanism for managing storage is rather convoluted, especially if you are going to store your virtual disk in a non-standard location: then you first need to add the required directory as a "storage pool". However, all the necessary exotic modules will be provided by your own distribution kit, and in this case, why not take the risk.
Performance
Hardware enhancements and paravirtualization technologies have made it possible to perform some tasks at speeds close to those of real hardware.
However, as it is, there is usually a definite drop in performance. Almost every configuration we tested on the guest desktop showed some sort of lag. But you get used to it, and you can turn off all sorts of beauty or turn on the appropriate neutralization mode, if you are worried about it.
We're not taking 3D performance into account here - that wouldn't be entirely fair, and it has its own category through the page. However, for day-to-day tasks using Terminal, you are unlikely to notice much of a difference between our candidates. Experiments with kernel compilation have shown that VirtualBox lags far behind in the competition. The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test confirmed this conclusion: both tasks completed 20% slower than the others. Disk I / O (especially if you have an SSD) and network traffic were fast for all of our candidates. Ultimately, VMware secured the edge with support for newer Intel processors.
Functionality
All of our candidates are designed for different use cases, and therefore each has its own, individual benefits. Of course, the presence of some standard features is certainly implied: for example, it is customary to include the ability to create snapshots, support for Intel VT-x and AMD-V processor extensions, and flexible configuration of virtual hardware. All of this is offered by everyone, but some applications are capable of more heroic feats.
It should be noted here that Gnome Boxes and Virt-Manager are only interfaces to Qemu (via the libvirt abstraction layer). And Qemu is essentially a processor emulator that can provide virtualization over KVM, but it is a whole world nonetheless.
So, let's take a look at our candidates separately.
Gnome Boxes ★★
When called from the command line, Qemu supports a ton of options, most of which are missing from Gnome Boxes: its goal (implemented) is to keep it simple and clear in appearance and operation. Through its user-friendly wizard interface, you can set up a virtual machine in literally three clicks - just point it to the appropriate ISO. Boxes abstracts the difference between a virtual machine and a remote machine, and you can connect to both via VNC, SPICE (which allows audio to work over the network), or OVirt.
Gnome boxes
Boxes doesn't offer much control over your virtual machine over the network, but at least it does provide all the NAT wizardry you need to keep your virtual machine communicating with the world. Other candidates successfully set up NAT, network bridges, or host-only networks, and all this can be very convenient in certain circumstances.
Virt-Manager ★★★★
Virt-Manager (aka Virtual Machine Manager) offers significantly more Qemu features (but again, not all). He seems to have gone overboard with his list of supported x86 operating systems, in particular those from the Linux family.
Virt-Manager
Leaving that aside, Virt-Manager makes it relatively easy to configure a machine of any complexity - you can add any hardware, including multiple network interfaces. In addition to KVM VMs, Virt-Man-ager is able to leverage Qemu / libvirt support for Xen guests and LXC containers. Optionally, it can also poll guest resources and thus provide very nice graphs (like the ones in the Performance section on page 25, which takes about 30 seconds after Windows 10 starts up). In addition, Virt-Manager leverages Qemu's recently added USB 3.0 support.
Compatibility and snapshots
Sometimes it is necessary to move VMs between hypervisors. All our programs can import machines stored in the Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) format, which is simply a tar archive with a VMDK (VMware) disk image, and virtual hardware data. VirtualBox allows export to this format, but also has its own - Virtual Disk Image (VDI), and also copes with all the others.
The qemu-img command can be used to convert formats. Of particular note is his beloved QCOW2 format, which allows multiple snapshots of the system to be stored internally using the excellent Copy On Write (COW) trick.
Boxes, Virt-Manager, VirtualBox, and VMware Workstation support system snapshots, keeping different states of their VMs. VMware Player allows you to have only one snapshot per machine in addition to its current state. So deep regression testing is ruled out.
VirtualBox and VMware Workstation are also capable of "cloning" VMs, and this is an effective method of creating system snapshots: data is written to the corresponding clone only if its state is different from that of the parent. VMware allows the VMDK guest image to be mounted to the host, which is also convenient, although the same trick can be done by converting to a raw disk image and using standard Linux tools and arithmetic to calculate the partition offset.
VirtualBox ★★★★
Originally a desktop virtualization client, VirtualBox is still probably the go-to tool for many. This program has a clear structure that makes it easy to set up a virtual machine, and many useful options. In addition to limiting the number of CPU cores that the guest OS has access to, VirtualBox allows you to specify a limit on the guest's CPU utilization as a percentage. VirtualBox also supports video recording, so you can record a Windows tutorial for your YouTube channel overnight.
VirtualBox
It can import any virtual disks, but only offers USB 2.0 host controller support, and then only if you install the proprietary Oracle Extension Pack. The distributed clipboard and drag-and-drop options (in one or both directions, as you wish) are quite handy. VirtualBox provides convenient indicators for network and disk I / O and for CPU utilization.
By the way, in the article "Configuring VirtualBox" we talked in detail about how to install and properly configure the VirtualBox virtual machine.
VMware Player ★★★
The free offering from VMware has come a long way since its introduction in 2008. The most remarkable thing is that this is no longer a player: it is more than capable of creating a quality virtual machine for you.
VMware Player
In addition to supporting a number of network configurations (NAT, bridged, host-only, etc.), it offers very nice options for shaping network traffic, which is very convenient if you are testing the latest version of, say, a DDoS client or looking at how much malware you can hang Windows XP on your virtual machine until it bursts. VMware also supports USB 3.0 devices, and installing guest tools will allow for shiny graphics, shared clipboard and shared directories. Player is somewhat inferior when it comes to snapshots (it only allows you to take one), but we criticized it in the previous section.
VMware Workstation ★★★★★
There is a non-free version of VMware Player (VMware Player Pro), but we decided that for this Comparison it would be more appropriate to use a higher quality Workstation instead. This app provides many additional features for developers, including the ability to group virtual machines into a kind of virtual phalanx so that you can make them go live simultaneously with one click.
VMware Workstation also offers support for new instructions for modern Intel processors, and also allows you to configure machines with virtual CPUs up to 16 GB and 64 GB of RAM. However, Workstation is heavily focused on integrating with the rest of the (rather heavy) VMware suite, and will therefore look more appropriate in an enterprise environment.
Desktop integration
Some users love the perfect harmony of the interfaces of virtual machines and their corresponding hypervisors with the host desktop, while others are only confused.
VirtualBox uses Qt4, which is especially infuriating on the Qt-based Arch Linux desktop, where Qt5 is used all over the place, but this is just a bit of a niche flaw. Boxes pairs perfectly with Gnome 3, which is to be expected; Virt-Manager and VMware use GTK3 and are also perfectly compatible with it.
All of our candidates allow us to switch the virtual machine to full screen mode, and luckily they all allowed us to switch back with the appropriate keyboard shortcut.
The highlight modes are Unity in VMware (no, this is not a way to make everything ubuntu) and Seamless in Virtual-Box - both display application windows directly from the guest on the host desktop. This is very good for a Linux VM (excluding potential confusion between the guest and host windows), however, trying to launch the Windows 10
preview did not work very well; Windows 7 with the Aero interface turned on was also not a pleasant experience.
All of our candidates support running the guest in full screen mode and can be configured to change resolution when the window is resized. Suitable hotkeys are provided to exit this script. The drag-and-drop capability on VMware machines is very convenient, which is why VMware wins this category.
Graphics acceleration
Any of our candidates would serve you great if you just wanted to set up a virtual machine without going to do anything graphics-intensive.
But if you need 3D acceleration, you need to take VMware or VirtualBox. Once you get the hang of installing the Guest Additions (including the side-by-side VirtualBox double-negation question that tries to turn you away from its experimental WDDM support, like the Windows 7 Aero interface you need), you can enjoy 3D acceleration in VirtualBox and in two VMware clients.
Boom boom, Maxwell's silver hammer hit the, uh, hive. He died shortly after this screenshot was taken in Don't Starve.
VirtualBox allows you to allocate up to 256 MB of system RAM to a virtual video card, and VMware up to 2 GB. Note that these gigabytes are not taken from your actual graphics card, so often you won't see much improvement over 256MB. VirtualBox also provides 2D acceleration for Windows guest, which should help speed up video rendering, screen enlargement, and color correction, although this depends a lot on host configuration - this setting won't have much effect on a fast machine. Windows VM probably won't run Battlefield 4 [Battlefield] or Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (so we're very fortunate to have ported them to Linux) when it's all down to 11, but more older or less demanding games will do just fine: we spent a good hour playing the popular indie game Don't Starve,
Everything worked better on VMware than on VirtualBox, but perhaps it was a more advantageous configuration - on Arch Linux we used the latest proprietary Nvidia driver, which could lead to the advantage of one over the other.
Verdict
Virtualization is a long and complex topic for Comparisons. If you want to run 3D games, you won't even look at Gnome Boxes or Virt-Manager, and unless you do better in VirtualBox than we do, you will choose VMware as your hypervisor. But then again, this technology is by no means as mature as the native DirectX 11 format. You might even have better luck with games in Wine [Ed .: - Or not.] With some experimental performance patches. We're not really crazy about VMware licenses, especially the one that makes you pay after a 30-day trial, but for some, the enterprise-level features in Workstation will be a blessing. In particular, if using vCenter Converter from VMware, you virtualize the machine with one click - ideally,
We haven't covered the ton of command line tools that come with all of our candidates, but they are, along with more than plentiful documentation. You can use them in your scripts when you go all the way into virtualization by pushing a host of virtual machines out of a secure command line environment. Perhaps hackers will prefer to work directly with Qemu, while those looking for a simple free open source solution will be happy with Gnome Boxes.
Bubbles look good if you don't see the effort involved in rendering them.
But there is only one winner (a draw is a rare exception), and this time it's Virt-Manager - well, we couldn't afford to win VMware. Virt-Manager lets you harness most of Qemu's power without resorting to lengthy command line spells. Virtual machines can be paused, reconfigured, moved, and cloned - all without much hassle. The only thing it lacks is support for graphics acceleration, but who knows, maybe it will appear. VMware Player and Gnome Boxes tied for second place as they both scored high for their simplicity, and we love the Boxes icon, which depicts a tesseract (or hypercube, or cube in a cube - whatever you like).
Virt-Manager ★★★★
All managers should work so well.
VirtualBox ★★
Once the only solution, now on the sidelines.
VMware Player ★★★
Fast and convenient, but the license failed.
VMware Workstation ★★
Fast and full featured, but not free.
Boxes ★★★
The easiest way to install and configure a VM.
