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myspaghetti / macos-virtualbox

Push-button installer of macOS Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra guests in Virtualbox on x86 CPUs for Windows, Linux, and macOS
GNU General Public License v2.0
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KVM support #632

Closed cserby closed 1 year ago

cserby commented 1 year ago

We're looking into using KVM as a hypervisor. Roughly how much effort would it take to port the script to use libvirt / virsh instead of VBoxManage? Are there any parts of the script that heavily rely on VirtualBox functionalities?

myspaghetti commented 1 year ago

The main reason the script relies on VirtualBox is for multiplatform support. QEMU/KVM is definitely the superior virtualization solution for macOS on x86 processors.

Other than multiplatform support, the script relies on VirtualBox keyboard input and (optionally) taking guest screenshots, both of which are available on KVM through virsh.

While I'm not sure about macOS host support, KVM definitely works on Windows 11 hosts through WSL2 and runs macOS guests better than VirtualBox in my opinion.

myspaghetti commented 1 year ago

Another difference is the use of -drive /shared_folder in QEMU/KVM in place of the convoluted VISO system in VirtualBox. And of course, all the VBoxManage commands have to be rewritten as qemu commands.

Switching to KVM can actually streamline the script considerably.

myspaghetti commented 1 year ago

Closing issue, unlikely to happen unless a new maintainer picks it up.