Virtualisation made easy $ sudo pacman -S qemu libvirt iptables-nft dnsmasq virt-manager With the confirmation that virtualisation is supported, you will probably want to install some packages to make installing and managing VMs a lot more user friendly. $ LC_ALL=C lscpu | grep Virtualizationĭepending on which team you opted to support, the output will vary, but either output will confirm you support KVM. And what this means to you the user is that you can quickly setup up your system for managing VMs.īut even if KVM is included in the Linux kernel installed on your computer, you first need to check whether your CPU has virtualisation support.

So if you run Linux, you will have this module included. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), is a hypervisor - an emulator or sorts - that comes baked into the Linux kernel. Note: This article will be focussing on how to run virtual machines on Arch Linux. So I can carry around an operating system with persistent storage, and plug it into any PC.

Whilst typing this up, I read about how I can use a virtual Debian install to install (not live load) a Debian distribution onto a USB drive. And as time goes on, I find more things to add to the list of uses. Personally, I use virtual machines for different purposes: testing out operating systems or Linux distributions without having to install them to bare metal install my own software to test compatibility try out the latest hyped about desktop environment or window manager. Virtualisation is an incredibly useful tool, even for personal use.

Install linux arch virtualbox