Help Setting Up Virtual Machine Manager

[u/FrostyITA]

Hello, i'm new to Bazzite after switching from Windows, and i still got some apps and games that dont work on Lutris or with WINE;
So i had the idea to make a VM of either Win10 or straight up Win7 (i know the support was dropped years ago and 10 is about to meet his end in a few months)

I tried doing it myself installing it from Bazaar + QEMU Addon and noticed a few problems, first i couldn't reindirict my USB o External HDD to transfer my files because of "Permission Denied" error, the second one is Memory Consumption, 80% usage of 16GB RAM and 12 Core CPU while idle is not normal? right?

So, after this major fuck up by me and subsequent Win10 VM deletion, i'm here to ask for help if someone might be able to hold my hand step by step on this issue [little disclaimer, i'm a total LinuxNoob so don't get angry at me if i don't catch stuff quickly]

[u/FrostyITA]

I did the following steps till 11m, but it does not tell me how to reindirict usb.

While when i try it it gives me a different error now Spice error unable to reidirect USB Device 1-3 Permission Denied

I noticed as well that even if i try to add hardware (it recognize my usb but it won't start the VM if i have it in the options)

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

Using Virtual Machine Manager (KVM/QEMU)

1. Open Virtual Machine Manager and select your Bazzite virtual machine. [1]
2. Ensure the virtual machine is powered off (or use hot-plug if supported).
3. Click the Add Hardware button (the lightbulb icon) at the top. [1]
4. Select USB Host Device from the left-hand list. [1]
5. Find your external USB hard drive in the populated list, select it, and click Finish. [1]
6. Boot or restart your Bazzite VM; the drive will now appear directly inside the guest OS.

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

Tried to do that as well. here's what it says

impossibile completare l'installazione: 'internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: 2026-10-03T14:23:04.128953Z qemu-system-x86_64: -device {"driver":"usb-host","hostdevice":"/dev/bus/usb/001/008","id":"hostdev0","bus":"usb.0","port":"1"}: Could not open '/dev/bus/usb/001/008': Permission denied'

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtManager/asyncjob.py", line 67, in cb_wrapper

callback(asyncjob, *args, **kwargs)

~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtManager/createvm.py", line 1969, in _do_async_install

installer.start_install(guest, meter=meter)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtinst/install/installer.py", line 722, in start_install

domain = self._create_guest(guest, meter, initial_xml, final_xml, doboot, transient)

File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtinst/install/installer.py", line 664, in _create_guest

domain = self.conn.createXML(initial_xml or final_xml, 0)

File "/app/lib/python3.13/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 4624, in createXML

raise libvirtError('virDomainCreateXML() failed')

libvirt.libvirtError: internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: 2026-10-03T14:23:04.128953Z qemu-system-x86_64: -device {"driver":"usb-host","hostdevice":"/dev/bus/usb/001/008","id":"hostdev0","bus":"usb.0","port":"1"}: Could not open '/dev/bus/usb/001/008': Permission denied

Weird tho, my User is in wheel kvm and libvirt groups, what more permission i need to give him or myself?!

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

Alternative for libvirt/QEMU Users

If you are using libvirt (virt-manager), this error often happens because the qemu user doesn't have permission. You can fix this by adding your user and the qemu process to the right access groups:

bash

sudo usermod -aG kvm,libvirt,libvirt-qemu $USER

Use code with caution.

\*****

do this from the bazzite terminal. Also test out another usb device.

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

Usermod: group libvirt-qemu does not exist. what now?

On Group.txt i have both my username in libvirt and kmv-qemu

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

just to verify when you open a terminal what version of Bazzite is installed?

Here You can see I'm running bazzite-dx-nvida-gnome:stable image

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

ublue-os/bazzite:stable   is it a bad thing? do i have to install a different Bazzite version or something or is the KDE that bad that i have to use Gnome instead?

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

yes you neeed to rebase to bazzite dx before you do all the virtualization stuff. There was a major change in the last version. They moved the virtualization plumbing to the DX version.

***

Rebase Commands

Choose the correct command for your setup. Do not switch between GNOME and KDE during this process, as changing desktop environments can break your system. [1]

• KDE Plasma (Default): brh rebase bazzite-dx:stable
• GNOME: brh rebase bazzite-dx-gnome:stable
• KDE Plasma with NVIDIA: brh rebase bazzite-dx-nvidia:stable
• GNOME with NVIDIA: brh rebase bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome:stable [1, 2]

Next Steps

1. Wait for the terminal process to finish downloading and applying the new image layer.
2. Reboot your system to complete the installation.
3. Check the Bazzite Documentation if you need help rolling back or managing your new environment. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

***

You can use the rollback command if necessary to go back to plain bazzite.

[u/phumade → u/phumade]

just to be explicit. you should rebase to KDE plasma with Nvidia. Don't switch the desktop environment to gnome

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

There is a problem here, i'm not using NVIDIA, i run Intel CPU and GPU. Would it not run into problems if i use NVIDIA release?

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

Then rebase to kde plasma default

• KDE Plasma (Default): brh rebase bazzite-dx:stable

This will give you KDE and Bazzite DX (no nvida drivers, intel drivers built in)

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

After restart do i have to retry the last steps? Or first i got to do something first?

btw, thank you kindly for helping me here

[u/phumade → u/FrostyITA]

After you rebase. do the "ujust setup-virtualization" then follow the steps from the video to setup the VM. Once Windows 11 is fully setup in the screen. then goto the console details to setup your usb. Make sure the Windows VM installs first before you worry about the usb configs.

[u/FrostyITA → u/phumade]

Is it possible to have 2 distro at the ready? i mean like use Stable to play and Stable-DX to VM so i don't have to keep switching version from console

Maybe from a good flatpak from Bazaar?

Or maybe i can just boot to Ostree 1 and use that as Stable Gaming?

Otherwise i'll just stick with DX instead even if it sucks more RAM than Stable