A friend of mine mentioned that a much more efficient way to distro hop is to do it in a VM rather than boot an ISO every time. I’ve only ever used WINE and am unsure how to go about doing this.
What’s the best way to try distro hopping and what are some easy-ish distros to try out temporarily?
I’ve been using Linux Mint Debian edition for a while now and am happy with it on my main machine, but want to try out some others on my spare just to make sure there’s not another one that I like more.
I use QEMU/KVM with virt-manager and I love it. I recommend that you check out a tutorial on how to install it and use it
There’s also QuickEmu which is really handy for spinning up a pre-built VM to just fart around with.
I’d say the best way for beginners is to install VirtualBox. You will be able to take snapshots before you try something stupid, so you can always restore to a known good state. The GUI is also pretty much fool-proof.
VirtualBox includes non-free drivers for some features. I’d recommend using QEMU/KVM with Virt-Manager instead, since it is entirely free and open-source.
https://linuxconfig.org/setting-up-virtual-machines-with-qemu-kvm-and-virt-manager-on-debian-ubuntu
There is also a release of VirtualBox that uses KVM.
Virt-manager is a pain to use.
Then the main question would be, do you care about using proprietary software or not?
Definitely VirtualBox in my opinion. I used it before. Recently switched to libvirt with virt-manager (Qemu+Kvm), but this is really a bit more advanced and need more understanding and setup. VirtualBox is much easier and simple.
Snapshot feature of VB is fantastic (not to any reader, snapshot is not an screenshot, rather a temporary image point of the entire system you can revert back anytime like a backup). Binding and accessing directories from your host system is also relatively easy, if I remember right. It’s been a while since I used VirtualBox.
Virt Manager does have snapshots as well.
As for the host system directory mounts, you got me there. There seems to be an option in the Virt Manager GUI, but it is kind of difficult to get working.
I’ve never used Virtualbox on Linux - it was what I used back when I was on Windows.
I don’t agree. I’m pretty sure Virtualbox has its own weird kernel module instead of KVM.
In addition, I’m pretty sure the the Virt Manager GUI has most of those features and is in general pretty easy to use.
We’re talking about someone who wants to know how to easily distro-hop. That’s not an expert level user. Have you tried unmounting an iso image from a virt-manager VM? Yes, that’s how bad virt-manager is as a user-facing GUI.
Yes, I’ve unmounted an ISO image plenty of times. The button, in my opinion, isn’t that hard to find.
I figured out how to use virt-manager when I was 15 years old, it’s not as hard as it seems.
Just use Virtmanager or Boxes or something that doesn’t use DKMS every time it updates.
Virtualbox is a bad habit that’s best not to start.
I don’t have any experiences with Gnome Boxes. However, there’s no denying VirtualBox is a lot more user-friendly as a GUI than virt-manager.
Easiest would be to get a VM frontend like Gnome Boxes. You just download the installation iso of the distro you want to try, create a new VM in Boxes, point it at the iso and when it boots install the distribution normally.
It will be completely separated from your normal system. It’s a second computer inside your computer. When you’re done testing you can just delete the VM.
I’m not an expert of virtualization but I’ve had a few VM in Gnome Boxes.
I use Fedora Workstation and I love Gnome and the way you switch between workspaces instead of having multiple windows in one workspace like you do on Windows.
I don’t know if I would really have discovered the Gnome workflow if I only had it installed in a VM. When doing the three fingers touchpad gesture in VM, it would bring me back to my normal Gnome installation, so I never really got to try KDE for real.
I guess if I really wanted to discover a distribution or a different desktop environment, it would be better to really commit as a VM just gives you a good sample.
I might be wrong as maybe some people know how to really isolate the VM from the real machine though…
Virt Manager GUI is my preferred.
If you just want to “try it out” and not planning to store any private data then you may try this:
Online places like distrosea allow you to try a handful of distros and de’s without having to download anything.
Try VMware Player. Its VM performance is pretty good, and it supports Wayland with Its drivers.
