Eight Best Linux VM Managers Compared – Desktop to Homelab

Описание: n 2026, people say VMs are dead—containers won. Wrong. VMs are evolving, not extinct. I compare the practical VM managers for Linux: simple desktop tools to bare-metal homelab beasts and next-gen thin VMs.
We cover:

Why VMs still matter (isolation, legacy, parallelism fails)
What VMs & containers are (plus why we need them)
Head-to-head chart
Real demos & findings
My 2026 ranking
Personal XCP-ng upgrade war story

NOTE: You my notice the lack of screen shots for VMware Workstation Pro there is a reason and here it is: VMware Workstation Pro is free for personal use now and still one of the most polished options — but Broadcom's download portal is a nightmare. You need a login, then search, then scroll through 2,500 unsorted items with no way to filter or sort. I gave up.
Broadcom, Please take a clue from Oracle VirtualBox: searchable page, download link on the front, direct to the product. That's how it's done. Broadcom — fix this. Until then, the open options like Proxmox and virt-manager are way easier.

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
00:16 - VMs are dead?
01:43 - VM Managers How I Rated them
04:19 - Cockpit
04:56 - Gnome Boxes
05:15 - Oracle Vrttualbox
06:26 - Proxmox VE
07:47 - Vagrant
08:20 - virt-manager
08:46 - VMware Workstation Pro & VM Ware Fusion Pro
09:13 - XCP-ng
09:46 - VM Manager Overhead
12:14 - Virtual Manager Results
21:28 - VM Manager Final Tally
25:28 - Fina Thoughts