{"slug": "virt-manager", "name": "virt-manager", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 2, "score": 0.578, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-01-10", "latest": "2026-10-23", "why": "It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://virt-manager.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["virt-manager"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 781797632, "item_id": 48862352, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862352", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it multiple times a day, and it's great!", "excerpt": "I use it multiple times a day, and it's great! It doesn't try to hide details from you, but it does put a well-thought out GUI in front so you don't have to stumble around. It's not perfect, does take some getting used to, but it's stable and relatively comprehensive. I love it. Caveat: I'm mainly using it for home usage in my home lab. I also love that I can drop to the CLI easily for scripts and it plays perfectly ", "context": "home lab user", "use_case": "managing VMs in home lab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 781733504, "item_id": 48858344, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858344", "by": "jeroenhd", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this.", "excerpt": "I can't say I share your hatred. It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this. Especially because it allows managing a remote libvirt install over SSH, handling things like forwarding the screen and input for you. If you don't want to pick an OS preset, you can always just go for \"manual install\" and a \"generic\" OS and pick your own preferred configuration later. Or you paste the URL for an online install dir", "context": "", "use_case": "managing local and remote libvirt VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 745222353, "item_id": 46576397, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576397", "by": "free652", "date": "2026-01-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can boot it directly using virt-manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like tax software.", "excerpt": "I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little painful. Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / win", "context": "", "use_case": "boot Windows SSD for tax software", "switched_from": "", "story": "I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 781792912, "item_id": 48862057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862057", "by": "0cf8612b2e1e", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I have been using virt-manager and sleeping soundly that it was a secure isolation level.", "excerpt": "That is infuriating to read. I have been using virt-manager and sleeping soundly that it was a secure isolation level. VM guests should be considered trusted? Are you kidding me? That\u2019s my number one usage -to operate software I do not trust.", "context": "", "use_case": "running untrusted software in VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 745100339, "item_id": 46568771, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568771", "by": "Lvl999Noob", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The setup was too hard and it didn't work anyways.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to linux from windows. The only reason I was sticking with windows was because hoyoverse refuses to support linux. I finally decided I need some break from them anyways and took the plunge. First, I tried to install fedora atomic cosmic. It kind of worked but I could not get it to work with my dock + external monitors at all. Now that I am used to that setup, I can't go back. Not wanting to spend ", "context": "", "use_case": "GPU passthrough VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"}]}], "who": [{"by": "freedomben", "context": "home lab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862352", "date": "2026-07-10"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["managing vms", "running vms", "managing vms in home lab", "running untrusted software in vms", "managing local and remote libvirt vms", "boot windows ssd for tax software"], "compared": [{"slug": "proxmox", "name": "Proxmox", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "podman", "name": "Podman", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805342", "title": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50202681", "title": "Docker is weird", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434963", "title": "Podman 6: machine usability improvements", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46574707", "title": "I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465", "title": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803370098, "item_id": 50210631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50210631", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use virt-manager to run a handful of VMs using a bridge", "excerpt": "This is the primary selling point of podman to me actually: If you run any non-standard firewall rules (in my case I use virt-manager to run a handful of VMs using a bridge so each VM can get an IP directly on my router's subnet), some stuff may suddenly break because Docker takes a wrecking ball to the firewall rules.", "context": "", "use_case": "running VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker is weird"}, {"id": 781797632, "item_id": 48862352, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862352", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it multiple times a day, and it's great!", "excerpt": "I use it multiple times a day, and it's great! It doesn't try to hide details from you, but it does put a well-thought out GUI in front so you don't have to stumble around. It's not perfect, does take some getting used to, but it's stable and relatively comprehensive. I love it. Caveat: I'm mainly using it for home usage in my home lab. I also love that I can drop to the CLI easily for scripts and it plays perfectly ", "context": "home lab user", "use_case": "managing VMs in home lab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 781792912, "item_id": 48862057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862057", "by": "0cf8612b2e1e", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I have been using virt-manager and sleeping soundly that it was a secure isolation level.", "excerpt": "That is infuriating to read. I have been using virt-manager and sleeping soundly that it was a secure isolation level. VM guests should be considered trusted? Are you kidding me? That\u2019s my number one usage -to operate software I do not trust.", "context": "", "use_case": "running untrusted software in VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 781742144, "item_id": 48858884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858884", "by": "flyinghamster", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Until recently, I used it routinely for VMs, and it worked solidly and reliably.", "excerpt": "Until recently, I used it routinely for VMs, and it worked solidly and reliably. There is a ZFS storage backend as well, always nice to see since I've loved to use zvols for VMs, even when I did VirtualBox on OpenIndiana back before ZFS on Linux was viable. But I found that Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server, particularly for things like backup/restore and instru", "context": "", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 781733504, "item_id": 48858344, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858344", "by": "jeroenhd", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this.", "excerpt": "I can't say I share your hatred. It's my go-to management interface for VMs like this. Especially because it allows managing a remote libvirt install over SSH, handling things like forwarding the screen and input for you. If you don't want to pick an OS preset, you can always just go for \"manual install\" and a \"generic\" OS and pick your own preferred configuration later. Or you paste the URL for an online install dir", "context": "", "use_case": "managing local and remote libvirt VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 775001602, "item_id": 48437600, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48437600", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use KVM (with virt-manager) extensively", "excerpt": "I love podman and use it extensively, but am less sure how useful the machine functionality will be (to me). I use KVM (with virt-manager) extensively, and I could see how treating VMs as ephemeral like containers might be nice for some workflows, but for me I want my VMs to be stateful as they are now. Anything I want container workflow for I just use containers. I don't do any Windows though, all linux. What are so", "context": "all-Linux user", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Podman 6: machine usability improvements"}, {"id": 745222353, "item_id": 46576397, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576397", "by": "free652", "date": "2026-01-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can boot it directly using virt-manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like tax software.", "excerpt": "I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little painful. Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / win", "context": "", "use_case": "boot Windows SSD for tax software", "switched_from": "", "story": "I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too"}, {"id": 745100339, "item_id": 46568771, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568771", "by": "Lvl999Noob", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The setup was too hard and it didn't work anyways.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to linux from windows. The only reason I was sticking with windows was because hoyoverse refuses to support linux. I finally decided I need some break from them anyways and took the plunge. First, I tried to install fedora atomic cosmic. It kind of worked but I could not get it to work with my dock + external monitors at all. Now that I am used to that setup, I can't go back. Not wanting to spend ", "context": "", "use_case": "GPU passthrough VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"}]}