Alternate between KVM/libvirt and VirtualBox on the same workstation

Rocky Linux General
1

Hi,

After having used VirtualBox for many years, I’ve definitely switched to KVM/libvirt and virt-manager on my workstation and my laptop for managing virtual machines. It’s a bit less intuitive, but technically performances are much better and it’s much less bug-infested.

But sometimes I have to teach Linux classes where my students have various setups on their laptops (Windows, macOS, Linux), and the only common denominator here is VirtualBox.

I know it makes no sense to have two hypervisors on the same machine (and technically it’s also impossible). But is there a way to only install the two and then switch between them ?

Cheers,

Niki

2

Is it safe/possible to have both services as long as one does not run both at the same time?
For something like firewalld.service and nftables.service that is possible. (Although I would disable and mask the one that I don’t want.)

The question is thus whether KVM and VirtualBox provide “same file” (package conflict) and
whether they provide kernel modules that you can’t load simultaneously (as in Nouveau and NVidia’s own).

What is “nested virtualization”? Supposedly some hypervisors support running a second hypervisor (and VM) in VM.

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