Alternatives to GNOME Boxes
A simple GNOME desktop app for creating and running virtual machines on Linux. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
GNOME Boxes
A simple GNOME desktop app for creating and running virtual machines on Linux.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as GNOME Boxes.
Virtual Machine Manager
The standard desktop front end for KVM on Linux, plus the command line tools that go with it.
Virtual Machine Manager offers more control over KVM guests, remote libvirt hosts over SSH and command line tools, but storage pools and networks assume libvirt knowledge.
VirtualBox
The free desktop hypervisor most people start with: run Windows, Linux or BSD in a window on the machine you already have.
VirtualBox runs on Windows, macOS and Linux with snapshots and shared folders, but it uses its own kernel modules on Linux that can break after system updates.
Quickgui
A graphical desktop front end for Quickemu that downloads operating systems and launches virtual machines.
Quickgui is a graphical front end for Quickemu that downloads systems and creates VMs on Linux and macOS, but it depends on Quickemu and QEMU being installed.
Quickemu
Downloads an operating system and builds a properly configured QEMU virtual machine from one short config file.
Quickemu builds QEMU virtual machines from a short config file with automatic image downloads, covering macOS, Windows and BSD guests, but it is used from the command line.
VMware Workstation Pro
Type-2 hypervisor for running virtual machines on Windows and Linux desktops.
VMware Workstation Pro adds mature snapshots, cloning, nested virtualisation and networking on Windows and Linux, but it is closed source and free only for personal use.
Multipass
Canonical's tool for launching a fresh Ubuntu virtual machine with one command, on Windows, macOS or Linux.
Multipass launches Ubuntu virtual machines with one command on Windows, macOS or Linux, but it is Ubuntu-focused rather than built for trying other operating systems.
Also worth comparing
These listings name GNOME Boxes as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Windows (dockur)
A Docker container that downloads, installs and runs Windows inside a KVM-accelerated virtual machine.
GNOME Boxes is a graphical Linux desktop app that downloads and installs common systems automatically, with USB redirection and shared folders, but no container-based management.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
QEMU
The machine emulator and virtualiser that most of the Linux virtualisation stack is built on.
KVM
The Linux kernel's built-in hypervisor for hardware-accelerated virtual machines.
libvirt
A toolkit, daemon and API for managing KVM, QEMU, Xen, LXC and other virtualization platforms.
SPICE
An open source remote display system and guest tools for interacting with virtual machines.
Lima
Launches Linux virtual machines from the command line on macOS, Linux and Windows, with file sharing and port forwarding set up automatically.
