Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Playing with Virtual Box for the last few years, I had some problems after upgrading to Ubuntu 21.04 (I think it was). Thus I decided to look around for alternatives and found some interesting Virtual Machines: Gnome Boxes, Virtual Machine Manager(VMM), and recently Quickemu with its graphical counterpart Quickgui, especially for Linux host systems.
Now I want to highlight my experiences with Quickemu/Quickgui package; on request I might consider some writeup for Boxes and VMM.
The package is made by Martin Wimpress (dev. Of the Mate DE), who made this for quickly running checks on his Mate upgrades, and decided to make it public. Read more here: https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu.
Yannick Mauray and Mark Johnson joined in to make the graphical interface, in Quickgui, which is built on top of Quickemu. Both packages are free to get and use.
Quickemu is a command controlled app that is based on the QEMU virtual machine and is meant to automatically “do the right thing”, rather than expose exhaustive configuration options.
Installation – Quickemu for Ubuntu
You can install Quickemu from a ppa with these commands:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/quickemu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install quickemu
Installation – Quickgui for Ubuntu
And the Quickgui can be installed from another ppa:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannick-mauray/quickgui
sudo apt update
sudo apt install quickgui
For other host systems, please refer to the Github site mentioned above.
Running command-line
After installation, there are only two commands to use for downloading and running the App. :
quickget ubuntu-mate impish
This command will download and configure the package you want. Above is the example for Ubuntu-Mate Impish. But there is a very wide selection of Linux distros and Windows 10 and 11 versions, as well as a selection of MacOS packages, to choose from.
It will make a folder in your Home dir, for the package and a conf file, unless you select another dir, you can even put it on an USB stick or external HDD.
quickemu –vm ubuntu-mate-impish.conf
To run your desired package (above again the example for Ubuntu-Mate Impish), just use the above command and your OS of choice will start allowing you to use a live version or install it.
Windows will bring you to the install screen.
MacOS has some special instructions, see Github.
Running Gui
The Graphical Interface works very easily after having installed both the Quickemu and Quickgui packages.
Open the Quickgui App and it will open with a screen to allow you to select your already installed package, or to download a new operating system.
Clicking the “Create new machines” , will give you a wide selection of Linux distros, Windows and MacOS versions to choose from.
You Select your Operating System, next choose the Version, and by a click on Download, the package will be downloaded into the Working directory, as shown.
A conf file is made as well for running the O.S. and specifying the optimised RAM for the VM based on the RAM op your computer, the cores, and the disk-size in GB for your VM (normally ram, cpu_cores are below 50% of your PC). You can manually change this in the conf file if you like.
config file: example for my PC, the cpu, ram and disk_size you may adjust as you prefer:
guest_os=“linux”
disk_img=“ubuntu-devel/disk.qcow2”
iso=“ubuntu-devel/ubuntu-devel.iso”
cpu_cores=“3”
ram=“8G”
disk_size=“64G”
Once the download finishes, click the Dismiss button, and you will come back to the main Menu screen.
Opening the ‘Manage existing Machines’ will show all the O.S.’s that you have downloaded and installed.
Select the one you want to open and a green arrow is inviting you to start your vm. With the red square, you can stop the vm and the trash icon is available if you want to get rid of the vm altogether.
Communication with the host is possible by activating the SPICE port or the SHH button.
Summary
I like this package because of its simplicity to use and being able to quickly and easily run the Operating System you want. It does not offer all the features that Virtual Box has, though.
This App allowed me even to see and work for the 1st time with a macOS system; so far I still choose to stay with Ubuntu.