Re: [orca-list] Gnome Boxes vs. Virt Manager

[Tony Baechler <tony baechler net>]

On 9/2/2015 5:10 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> Gnome Boxes does definitely support and use KVM. Here's an article on how to
> get started with it and comparing it to Virt-Manager:
> http://www.howtogeek.com/213922/easily-create-kvm-virtual-machines-on-linux-with-gnome-boxes/

Yes, my apologies.  Alex also pointed this out and I should have looked more 
closely before assuming.  The reason for my assumption is, as I mentioned, 
because KVM is not a dependency.  Where I was wrong is because it does use 
and depend on libvirt which is a virtualization library.  That library does 
in fact support KVM, so I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions.  I wasn't as 
smart as I thought.

> BTW, my understanding, and a Google search seems to bear this out, is that
> QEMU is part of KVM.

No, it's the other way around.  KVM and Qemu were separate projects, but the 
KVM user space code was merged back into Qemu.  KVM is now an official part 
of Qemu and there is no longer a separate KVM package.  However, I think the 
KVM kernel module is developed separately and is not part of Qemu.  The 
qemu-kvm package is a dummy which only includes a wrapper script and depends 
on Qemu itself.  I assumed that KVM would be in the package description as 
it is in ganeti, for example.

> Obviously no one expects you to ask about an application before you know
> about it, but once someone does point it out to you, I just don't get the
> resistance to look into it more.

I agree.  That's why I gave it a try.  It was so inaccessible with the 
keyboard that I didn't see much point in spending lots of time after having 
mostly good luck with Virt-Manager.  However, it's still installed and I'll 
keep trying and see how far I get.  The problem is everything requires a 
mouse click, so it seems like a lot more effort to me, but I've been wrong 
before.  For what it's worth, it has a lot more dependencies than 
Virt-Manager as well.