Help me get rid of virtual box

General system Applications
1

So, here I am, trying to get rid of more and more software which is proprietary, and since I left Windows for gorrd some like 3 years ago I came quite a long way. One piece of software on which I heavily rely on still is a proprietary thorn in my side: virtualbox. I tried to get rid of it twice before, and never managed it to make it in a way that I was satisfied with the outcome, going shamefully back to vbox.
But, alas, I was stumbling over quickemu and thought to myself “let’s give it another try” - but I cannot get that set up. This time, though, I try to do it on endevourOS - and you may know (or not know) that the past part of eOS is THIS here - me (anyone, that is) typing in the forum and asking the purple community for help!
So, current situation: vBox is istalled and running. I then did the necessary stuff to install and run quickemu with quickgui:

yay -S quickemu quickgui-bin
yay -S quickemu quickgui-bin

And then I tried to open quickgui, with the following result:

image
image929×737 58.2 KB

So I tried to do launch it from terminal, to get some debugging output:
image
image1444×817 42.3 KB

A quick internet search did not bring any quick solution, so here I am. Any ideas hoq to proceed, anyone having the same issues?

2

Try gnome-boxes or virt-manager

3

I don’t quite understand the question. Isn’t it just as simple as uninstalling the virtualbox package?

What are you asking? Are you asking how to properly set up an alternative to virtualbox or are you asking how to properly remove virtualbox?

1 Like
4

No Virtualbox is opensource, the base package that most distributions have in their repo that is.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ

The VirtualBox base package contains the full VirtualBox source code and platform binaries and is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. You can distribute and modify the base package, provided that you distribute all modifications under the GPLv2 as well.

1 Like
5

Well, I am on KDE. I tried virt-manager before, but compared to virtualbox or what I have seen in videos about quickemu it is the WAY MORE complicated solution - to have VMs in it runnign as smoothly as vbox always needs tinkering. To much of it for my personal taste.

Of course it is not about removing it, but substitute it with something similar - if I made this not clear with the rest of the kontext I apologize: I need something similar easy to use, but with “X” - see below:

Well, than I ask myself why there is only the less and less polished version of oracle around - which in version 7 has gotten even more shitty. It does one thing good - ease of setup of VMs. But the gui nowadays is so bad that I want to get rid of it - so that is my X: Something truly FLOSS, from a no shitty vendor, with similar ease of use.

So, any tips how to get quickemu with quickgui working on my system?

6

If you want are looking for an alternative you can use KVM/Qemu with libvirt and virt-manager.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KVM
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/QEMU
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/libvirt
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Virt-manager

1 Like
7

Did you read the sentences in which I said that I don’t want to got the libvirt way and want to get quickemu/quickgui working on my machine? If not, please do so?

1 Like
8

I missed that but in general the phrasing of your OP was quite confusing, you even had the others that took the time to respond confused. With that attitude people are not going to want to help you… Let me see if I can install it.

2 Likes
9

First of all: If my writing was to complicated write, I apologize again.
Second: I was frustrated by reading twice a sugestion for a solution which I tried in the past and did not work for me, which I mentioned twice - hence my response. I felt being treated rude by ignoring my experience with it, and this frustration made me being rude - well, again: Apolgies for a third time. I don’t usually have such an attitude.
Third: Thank you for still wanting to help, highly appreaciated. I am feeling humbled right now…

10

You got frustrated because a suggestion someone provided to you (for free) didn’t work out for you. And said frustration drove you to impose your rudeness upon other good Samaritans who were just trying to help you. Class act, buddy. Real class act.

It’s not about your writing. It’s about the content of your writing. To get your point across, remove your emotions from the equation and just state the important facts about your issue. Post actual error messages, not screenshots. Change the title to something that reflects your actual issue instead of choosing a title that leads people on a wild goose chase as to what your point is.

The title “Help me set up quickemu” would be much more informative compared to your current title.

Also, I’d recommend getting straight to the point when you write the description for your issue. If you want to know how to set up quickemu, then posting what issues you encountered when you attempted to set up quickemu should be more than enough info for people to help you diagnose your issues. After all, your goal is to obtain help, isn’t it? So this post isn’t really about a rant. It’s about obtaining assistance. A post to express your frustrations about a particular piece of software should probably be done in a different thread (like the Lounge or EosPub), not here.

1 Like
11

This isn’t really the case at all. There might be a slight learning curve if you’re coming from VirtualBox, but once set up, virt-manager is no more complicated to use. It takes me literally less than minute to setup and create a new VM in it, generally, and virtually no further “tinkering” is required.

2 Likes
12

What does pacman -Ss xdg-desktop | grep installed show?

3 Likes
13

I understand we can all get frustrated and communications in text can come across wrong because there is no facial and verbal expressions online. I think I figured out the the problem, I ran into the same issue as you that I get a blank screen. Then I went searching through the current issues and I ran into to this.

I then when I launch quickgui for more than 13 seconds and the rest of the gui appeared so I think you are most likely running into this issue because your screenshot shows the exact same symptoms as that open issue, I would suggest you follow that issue, but can you also try and open quickgui from your system and leave it open for about 20-30 seconds to see what happens for you?

1 Like
14

@milkytwix

And the errors in your second screenshot, verify that this is the issue you are running into because those errors come across in that same issue.

** (quickgui:102715): CRITICAL **: 13:29:19.309: Failed to read XDG desktop portal settings: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.NotFound: Requested setting not found

And since I do have those xdg-portal packages installed, I am assuming you do to? Then I would keep an eye on that issue for a solution.

1 Like
15

Instead of trying to get a package working that has not seen any development in over 2 years, give virt-manager a try. And yeah, I did read your post about problems with virt-manager. Its still a good alternative. This guide is excellent:

4 Likes
16

@eznix has a point, not much point in using a tool that hasn’t had an update in 2 years, especially with a rolling distribution you will run into packages that aren’t maintained regularly.

17

Here we go:

pacman -Ss xdg-desktop | grep installed
extra/xdg-desktop-portal 1.18.2-1 [installed]
extra/xdg-desktop-portal-kde 6.0.2-3 (plasma) [installed]

This looks okayish to me! But:

That helps quite a bit - confusion maximized: I can get it working if I start from terminal and wait. Started from Application Menu / KDE Gui it does not “wake up” after 13 seconds. but good to know that I am not alone with this issue! At least I know that I have to wait…

With that waiting period I can get it to work, and this is way more convenient than virt-manager. Will tinker around with it and see how far I will come. MAybe, just maybe, I give virt-manager a forth try, but compared to what I achieved with 2 VMs in like 15 minutes since quickgui is running virt-manager is like not even in the same book, the book is named “easy and convenient usability”. Well, let’s see. Thanks to all of you!

1 Like
18

Also if I remember reading somewhere that virt-manager will eventually be deprecated and that cockpit it supposed to be it’s replacement, have a look at that one while you are at it and it’s in the default repos.

extra/cockpit 313-1
    A systemd web based user interface for Linux servers
extra/cockpit-machines 309-1
    Cockpit UI for virtual machines
1 Like
19

I was wrong.

It was only mentioned that for RHEL it will be deprecated, but I think cockpit is still worth a look to see if it’s good enough for you.

20

Hello …

So, I see it’s another VM post. Let me dive in then.

But before starting @eznix thank you for recommending my post. It means a lot coming from a vet like you.

Ok, let’s start, this one is going to be long …

Virtual Machines And Your Question

What Is a Virtual Machine

A virtual machine or hypervisor is software that can emulate the functions of a physical computer inside a digitalized environment. In the virtual machine the word virtual means the said computer only exists in digital form. The actual computer or the hardware platform is called the “host”.

What Virtual Mechines Are Used For

Virtual machines are used for many things. Among them is testing software that is not supported by the host operating system. Develop apps and publish apps to the cloud. Sometimes deploy them as containerized applications. Also, some hosting services use virtual machines to keep costs down by sharing the same hardware over multiple virtual servers.

Benefits of using virtual machines

  • Keeping the costs down.
  • Energy saving.
  • Isolation environments.
  • Cloning and backing up a system is easy.
  • Flexible.
  • Space saving.
  • Enhances workplace mobility and customization.

Virtual Machine Types

There are two main types of virtual machines.

  1. Type 1
  2. Type 2

Type 1 Hypervisor

These types of hypervisors are also known as bear metal hypervisors. They don’t need a host operating system to support them. These run directly on the physical hardware and have the capability of creating and running their virtual machines.

Ex:

  • VMWare ESXi
  • Microsoft Hyper - v

Type 2 Hypervisor

Type 2 hypervisors are well-known as hosted hypervisors. This is t the main type we use with our home computer to run a virtual environment. These hypervisors can’t run on their own like the type 1. These need a host operating system to support them.

Ex:

  • VMWare Workstation/Player
  • Oracle VirtualBox
  • Microsoft Virtual-PC

And There Is KVM

From my point of view KVM (Kernel Virtual Machines) or in other words libvirt is a hybrid. In between type 1 and type 2. But it tends to be more towards type 1 in many ways. Due to its nature and the way we configure the virtual machines, it can run like a type 1 and also like a type 2 (mostly used as a type 2). But this is the best one out of most out there.

To Answer Your Question

From your main post, I understand you want to move away from VirtualBox. I somewhat do understand the reason. But VirtualBox is still a good virtual platform and it’s free (still). What I understand from your post you want to use a point-and-click UI-based virtualization software like VirtualBox.

Your choices:

  • VMWare Player/workstation.
  • GNOME Boxes (uses libvirt).
  • VirtualBox (I know you want to skip this but still).
  • Virt-Manager/QEMU.

QUICKEMU-GUI

This project is dead. If you go to their GitHub page you can see it has not received an update for three years. That’s a long time for a project like this to not have an update. Which is a good indication that the project has been abandoned. When a project is abandoned providing a helpful solution to a question is difficult. So, many would suggest you use something else that is supported and with a thriving online community.

I also searched for the error you’re getting and it seems it has been there for some time. In 2023 a person called codseus had the same issue when running the GUI in ZorinOS and he had to learn “Flutter” and fix it himself. Link to his post.

I also get that you just want to have a virtualization system without jumping through a lot of hoops. Or without much fiddling with the terminal. If this is something you’re not willing to change your best option is to use VirtualBox, Boxes (better to switch the DE to Gnome), or VMWare.

Being Fully Open Source

It is not necessary actually. Use what works the best and with less hassle for you. Whether it is open source or not doesn’t matter. For example, we can use a spanner or plier to loosen a nut. Even though both tools do the same job one does it better than the other. So, similar to that we have many software tools to do the same thing. What we have to do is select which tools do the job better. It might be proprietary or open source.

Recommendations

I urge you to go down the Virt-Manager/QEUM/KVM path.

Reasons For The Recommendation

The main thing is KVM path is fully open source. And the other thing is KVM modules are already in your Linux Kernel. The only thing you have to do is to run some terminal codes to configure the installed software properly.

You can use my guide to set things up as @eznix posted above. Once you do that you don’t have to do anything else. I’ve been using Virt-Manager for a long time and never had any issues. No update broke it (yet) and it’s click and go after setting it.

My Virt-Manager Today

image
image630×587 67.7 KB

Just click open and then click on the play/run button to start a guest OS. Installing a new guest is also easy. Just click Create a new virtual machine and then follow the on-screen GUI.

image
image627×584 46.8 KB

This post might not answer your question directly but I hope it provides some helpful information so you can make an informed decision.

3 Likes