If you work with virtual machines, perhaps to spin up a clean OS install for testing, historically you have either bitten the bullet and used one of the commercial options, or spent time getting your hands dirty with something open source. Over recent years that has changed, with the arrival of open source graphical applications for effortless VM usage. We’ve used GNOME Boxes here to make our lives a lot easier. Now KDE are also joining the party with Karton, a project which will deliver what looks very similar to Boxes in the KDE desktop.
The news comes in a post from Derek Lin, and shows us what work has already been done as well as a roadmap for future work. At the moment it’s in no way production ready and it only works with QEMU, but it can generate new VMs, run them, and capture their screens to a desktop window. Having no wish to join in any Linux desktop holy wars we look forward to seeing this piece of software progress, as it’s a Google Summer Of Code project we hope there will be plenty more to see shortly.
Still using the commercial option? You can move to open source too!
If neither Karton nor GNOME Boxes are sufficient for y’all’s needs, it’s worth considering Virtual Machine Manager. While it isn’t as easy as GNOME Boxes, it provides almost as much power as many commercial offerings, including the ability to manage virtual machines on hosts that you have SSH access to.
So… there is apparently a good GUI wrapper for QEMU for Gnome. (I wouldn’t know because I’m not much of a Gnome fan). Now there is one for KDE too. (Cool… I currently use that but am considering switching away again).
I find it kind of disturbing when I see things getting built for specific desktops and not Linux in general. Why not a desktop independent Linux application?
Strictly speaking, they both are desktop-independent in the sense that you can use Gnome-boxes on KDE and many people do.
“For GNOME” and “For KDE” is often shorthand for programs using the GTK+ and QT development frameworks. GNOME uses (and is closely tied) to GTK+; QT and KDE, ditto. So lots of GTK+ tools are produced by gnome projects and get the gnome name, and many QT tools are produced under the KDE umbrella. It does not mean you cannot use them with WindowMaker or CDE if you really want to.
The big advantages to sticking with one ecosystem are theming and integration on the one hand, and (if you can really manage sticking to one framework) only loading one set of graphical libraries into RAM or onto disk.
WindowMaker and CDE can’t be used because they’re legacy X11 technologies, and Wayland programs can’t be managed by X11 window managers. XWayland can’t work that miracle.
At least it apparently uses libvirt to manage VMs instead of creating a new KVirt library.
Boxes does too, the idea is to make a libvirt interface that plugs neatly into the parent DE nicely
KDE and Gnome. Two desktop environments with zero character.
KDE imitates Windows look&feel, Gnome copies MacOS.
The most “creative” was KDE in 3.2, I think, when it had its own take on Luna theme.
Trinity Desktop (TDE) is there for a reason.
The only decent DE for Linux.
Try it on your distribution or (even better) try Q4OS.
lol, I think Trinity looks like garbage. It’s all about personal preferences.
Good for you that good taste isn’t mandatory :)
With all due respect, that’s a very subjective opinion/sh*tpost, and little else.
The best DE, or indeed window manager, is whatever works for you, & nothing more or less.
I always felt, like I was in a battle with Gnome, to get it, somewhere near how I like, that’s why I don’t use it but, there’s plenty that like the simplicity.
KDE suits my needs & an upto date QT equivalence of Boxes, will be appreciated by Me, as I’ve used QT Virt Manager for years and that’s completely dead, deprecated & orphaned now.
Well, no.
Usability is surely also a personal thing. But is mostly measurable, ergonomics is measurable.
When I want (just as random example) that a window appears always on monitor 2, using gnome there is nothing to measure, the feature is simply not there.
In windows I can use “actual multiple monitors/display fusion/ot alike”, in Kde 3.x/TDE that feature is integrated, in plasma is still there but at the price of a bloated environment.
In GNOME/XFCE/LXDE/LXQT and so on that feature isn’t available, unless you start editing by hand obscure settings.
And I can make dozens of similar example
What’s subjective in that?
You can upgrade your DE, or you can downgrade the user’s expectation.
KDE/TDE followed the former way, windows mostly followed that way (for a good part of its history), MacOS followed the opposite direction, and gnome (especially 3.x+) aped that approach. that’s all.
If you are a plumber a ugly pickup is surely more useful than a Ferrari 308 (that’s the subjective part), but a Ferrari is still a better car by any metrics, and that’s measurable.
“a Ferrari is still a better car by any metrics”
Hahahaha nope. What about these metrics:
“Does it carry all my tools and materials to the client’s home?”
“Can I drive it around a muddy potholed jobsite?”
“Can I even drive it up the client’s gravel driveway?”
“Am I going to care if it gets a bit scratched or dented?”
“Can I afford to buy it?” or “Can I afford to buy it in addition to the truck I need to do my job?”
The problem is that the metrics for a car aren’t limited to the specs that car geeks obsess over. Some car hobbyists use cars as an end in themselves and that’s fine if that’s where your interests lie but the vast majority of people use cars as a tool. So the most important metric for them is “Does this car help me accomplish the things I want to do in my life.”
Now, if what you want to do is signal that you have money, or impress people who know about cars, or drive fast on a track, a Ferrari 308 looks like a great tool to do that. Those are fine metrics, but not the metrics a plumber needs.
Use cockpit to launch virtual machines. It’s a one step install and everything works from the browser
I have to disagree with you on this.
Windows 8 and 11 immitate Gnome. Windows 8 feels like it was direct copy of Gnome and 11 went a bit back to the 8/gnome interface, with some KDE inspired things.
KDE is a combination of Windows 7 and OSX, but much prettier and easier to use than both
I prefer the i3 window manager, but when I switch to a DE in case some Windows user wants to use my laptop, I switch to KDE. It’s pretty and people are instantly familier with it because it feels like OSX and Windows 7.
Saying that KDE feels like windows, was, more or less correct when KDE was in diapers. In 1998 or so.
Saying that in 2005 or in 2025 is wrong. Simply because since XP Microsoft took a lot by the KDE improvements made over the Win9x/Win2K GUI.
In short in the last quarter of a centuries a bidirectional flux of ideas between windows and KDE.
Think to the IE4 “integration” with the file manager, MS did it artificially just to complicate the life of Netscape (and sons), KDE did it for real, and Konqueror was (and still is) a real single program that does web browsing, ftp and other online task, and its also a fully fledged file manager.
In the same timeframe Gnome start apeing Macos and the Job’s nasty idea that ignorance is a value. (Ignorance is surely a value for Apple, but not for the users)
I’m too comfy with Linux mint cinnamon (its xfce4 with a lot of nice bells and whistles) to try anything else. Maybe one day I’ll try KDE
Or go back to LXDE (sorry, LXQT now) roots
x2
With you on that, I like cinnamon, not feeling the need to change
Fluxbox all the way!
Modern Gnome and to a lesser extent KDE are both bloated solutions in search of a problem. Luckily there is MATE, and other GUIs that stick to standard and well proven UI.
As for VMs, I use Virtualbox. I didn’t know about other level 2 Linux solutions so far.
There’s plenty of DEs, that aren’t bloated and don’t look 20yrs old.
The trouble with Mate is, it would die as a project if/when Martin Wimpress leaves.
I like the nostalgia of Mate, it reminds of peak Ubuntu 10.04, before Shuttleworth screwed it up & it is made with a lot of love, and I appreciate that, but it’s not for me…
Mate is not nostalgia, mate is the best incarnation of Gnome, Just like (read above) TDE is the best incarnation of KDE.
The only thing that peaked in Linux in 2003-2010 is the pleasure of use the system and the usability of it.
A marvel like PCLinuxOS 2007, is almost unavailable today.
Q4OS seem the only ready to go solution that reminds it.
On everything else one has to spend days, in tweaking installing, removing things to get a decent OS.
And Win11 is no different, hours needed to remove crap, hours needed to install ClassicShell/Start ALL back/Explorer Patcher and so on just to have a system usable as Win7 or XP.
Thanks for mentioning TDE. It looks parallel to KDE in a way that MATE is parallel to GNOME. Clean, usable, low on resources. I might try it.
For my use I use both VirtualBox and QEMU/KVM (with Virtual Machine interface) in KUbuntu. Only reason I now use VirtualBox is I have some older VMs I want to keep around. Otherwise I now use QEMU/KVM. Not sure why we need another GUI application to manage, but so it goes I guess for new users…
It’s not actually that much more to manage though because these applications are just wrappers for libvirt anyway (which runs QEMU/KVM)