From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: KVM usability Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 15:29:39 +0100 Message-ID: <20100302142939.GA949@elte.hu> References: <1608881698.266.1267537026723.JavaMail.root@yellowwing> <4B8D1F0F.40101@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: "Nikolai K. Bochev" , Peter Zijlstra , Anthony Liguori , Avi Kivity , Yanmin Zhang , ming m lin , sheng yang , Jes Sorensen , KVM General , Zachary Amsden , Gleb Natapov , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo , Fr??d??ric Weisbecker , Thomas Gleixner , "H. Peter Anvin" , Arjan van de Ven , Cole Robinson To: Gerd Hoffmann Return-path: Received: from mx2.mail.elte.hu ([157.181.151.9]:39538 "EHLO mx2.mail.elte.hu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752316Ab0CBOaA (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Mar 2010 09:30:00 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4B8D1F0F.40101@redhat.com> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: * Gerd Hoffmann wrote: > On 03/02/10 14:37, Nikolai K. Bochev wrote: > >I don't see where this argument is leading to. So far there are > >arguments that qemu/kvm sucks as a desktop virtualization, now > >suddenly the gui tools are shitty and everything should be done cli , > >because there's no man pages for virt-manager. Explain. > > Lets face it: virt-manager has a big bunch of problems. For > starters there is no (gui) way to create a virtual machine other > than installing one from a iso image or via pxe. So if you > downloaded a disk image and want to boot it -> no cookie for you. > Likewise if you have a bunch of already installed guests and want to > migrate from $othertool to virt-manager you can't do that easily. > > virt-manager builds on top of libvirt, so you always have the option > to use other tools (virsh command line shell for example) to get > something done which virt-manager doesn't provide a gui for. > libvirt can handle everything Peter asked for without problems. It > still sucks though. The whole point of a GUI is that you do *not* > have to go to libvirt.org to figure how to tweak the virtual machine > config xml using "virsh edit $vmname". >>From the short exposure i had to the VirtualBox GUI, that app certainly looks usable. I was able to create & manage a virtual machine without any hassle, and everything Just Worked (tm). The various GUI controls for suspending/snapshotting/halting the virtual machines were intuitive as well, and mouse integration and various graphics details were what i'd expect from a modern solution. So if Qemu/virt-manager/libvirt reached parity with the VirtualBox GUI, that would go a long, long way in satisfying non-expert virtualization users. I guess the first step would be to move away from the 'lets support lots of crappy virtualization solutions at once, poorly' model, and pick one good combo (i'd go for Qemu+KVM) and turn it into a heck of an all-around solution. Then all the other combos will catch up as well. (or will wither away) ( Sidenote: i also looked at the VirtualBox kernel driver. Oh my ... i really shouldnt have! They should migrate to the KVM kernel-side code ASAP ... ) Thanks, Ingo