What Free, Software-based Virtual Machine Program Do You Recommend?

Hello,

I downloaded VirtualBox and tested it with a bunch of Linux setups...I don't mean I actually installed Linux on them...I couldn't even get them to run.

It turns out my hardware doesn't support virtualization, which both Windows Hyper-V and VirtualBox require. (The VB manual says you can turn off hardware virt, but I get the same errors...it cannot even start any machine so I can't install any OSes into them.) There's really no HW virt, I checked BIOS setup.

Code:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine UBCD_5.25.

Not in a hypervisor partition (HVP=0) (VERR_NEM_NOT_AVAILABLE).

VT-x is not available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX).

Is there a software-based solution? I don't need a high-performance always-on server. This is just so I can run a favorite Linux distro here and there, and also I want to learn security-and-penetration testing with Kali Linux and Metasploit. I'm starting off reading some basic network security text I got only a while back and couldn't get to (even that needs a VM in my case to install the other Windows which I have educational, non-1 computer license discs)...then move on to learn Kali and dig into some other texts and Bruce Schneier (the Major's favorite, too, I see)!

I like to run Quickset Puppy Linux, Slackware and Slacko Puppy (Puppy with Slackware package manager) for general use.

 

It might be simply that the machine you are using doesn't have enough cpu power, RAM and/or unused disk space to run a virtual machine. What are the main specs? I've always used the free VMWare Workstation Player on an i5 system with 8Gb RAM and loads of disk capacity and everything works well, but it doesn't on this Thinkpad Edge with Intel i3.

 

No, it really doesn't do hardware virtualization. The errors are pretty clear. I also enabled Windows Subsystem for Linux, Hyper-V, and another Windows feature related to virtualization. (This was after trying VirtualBox; the VB manual says you can't use both.) None of them will run and WSL won't update the kernel (while on the Internet) ... to be clear, the "enablement" went ok so far as features are "turned on", they're just useless. There are also no settings to turn HW Virt on or off in the BIOS (which there should be). Many people are under the impression that 64-bit computers automatically support HW Virt but that's not so ... probably this is true with newer computers.

As for specs (I really need to update my sig, don't I?): 4 GB RAM, free space was 139 GB (at the time I tried these...I repartitioned just this week, still have 75GB free), Intel Dual-Core, 64-bit platform + Windows 10, and is within the specs per the manual. Again, wasn't even able to start a VM to install an OS to it, but able to create VMs fine (both with sizeable and fixed virtual disks, though early in the tests I settled on 20GB virtual).

So this is why I was looking to a software-based virtualization solution if such a thing exists.

 

A virtual machine is a computer that exist in software only.
You need a minimum of 8GB RAM.

 

Yes, I understand that ... but modern VM software relies on being able to allow the guest to have direct access to the hardware ... in Windows this is provided by a technology called Hyper-V. The word I was looking for is apparently "emulator" -- as in QEMU. (Newer versions are capable of doing either virtualization or emulation.) I have now successfully got that running with Puppy.

PRO: 1) Your hardware pretty much is of no consequence, you can choose any hardware to emulate. CONS: 1) Emulation is slower than virtualization. 2) It has a tendency to use up RAM and then crash, because you can't "assign" a specific limit to it, like you can with hardware virtualization. But that may be because of all my customized settings ... I try to block Windows from doing a lot of things. For example, I've been in the habit of turning off paging, for many years. Apparently that is a bad idea when running certain types of software under Windows 10! (So, this "CON" may not exist after all.) 3) You can't save a VM with customized settings and name? (Unless using snapshots?) It seems you must run a command every time, and you could just randomly choose to start a VM with different hardware every day, if you wanted to (obviously a bad idea if you "install" the OS to the virtual "hard disk", as opposed to just "running from live CD", so to speak). I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet.

FWIW, the VirtualBox version implies RAM required depends on the guest:
"For example, if your host machine has 4 GB of RAM and you enter 2048 MB as the amount of RAM for a particular virtual machine, you will only have 2 GB left for all the other software on your host while the VM is running. If you run two VMs at the same time, even more memory will be allocated for the second VM, which may not even be able to start if that memory is not available. On the other hand, you should specify as much as your guest OS and your applications will require to run properly. A guest OS may require at least 1 or 2 GB of memory to install and boot up. For best performance, more memory than that may be required." (It never actually gives a hard requirement. Puppy will run with only 256MB, and I hadn't even got to install any OS yet. Windows itself officially requires 2GB. Anywho, the fact is my BIOS does not support hardware vitualization.)

This begs the question if not allowing paging affected VB ... but in the end, it's irrelevant. I could try it again just for kicks, but it's probably a waste of my time ... I can't use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or Hyper-V themselves, either.

 

Were you trying to install 32 or 64 bit OSes in Vbox? Try a 32 bit (x86) version.

 

Its my guess your installation of the VM is where its going south perhaps?

Are you installing from a VDI or a .vhd file ext?

Yes your hardware lacks, and no software can account for this but, you should be able to run one VM @ 2g ram allocated?

 

Looks like you will have to make do with booting "Live" versions of Puppy etc until you get a PC that is up to the job. Even if you succeed in setting up a VM that actually runs, its performance would likely be poor, and as for running multiple VMs, forget it.