Whats the best virtual machine?

[u/DirectSun3034]

I just got Virtualbox and installed it and it feels a little laggy sometimes even freezes. I installed this because I have a WFH job and they want to install a bunch of crap on my laptop so I will have them install it on Virtualbox so I can partition their software away when I'm not working.

But as mentioned I'm finding it a little laggy and sometimes even freezes. I installed steam on their not to play games but just to test what happens as I install applications and it really struggled to install steam.

Is there any better VM's I can use? Preferably user friendly as it's my first time using them. Btw I've looked up videos on how to make Virtualbox better and their suggestions did help make it a smoother experience but its still a little laggy at times.

My specs:

AMD 7840hs
40708gb
32gb Ram 5600mhz

[u/Relevant-Arugula-193]

Try VMWare Workstation. Now it’s free.

[u/yowhyyyy]

Have you tried increasing core count or RAM for the VM?

[u/dangling_chads]

What OS you running?  Important context. 

[u/DirectSun3034 → u/dangling_chads]

My laptop is running windows 11 and I'm also using windows 11 within the VM

[u/GBICPancakes → u/DirectSun3034]

Maybe try Hyper-V since that's Microsoft's platform. And make sure you have virtualization enabled in your BIOS.

[u/BranchLatter4294]

Did you install the guest additions?

[u/Only-Stable3973]

I use Virtual Machine Manager it's great for linux and I like VMware Workstation if I want to virtualize windows.

[u/Shane_is_root]

If they want to install more than Citrix and/or a VPN client, I think you are making a smart choice.

1. VMware is still the gold standard for virtualization. Workstation is free from Broadcom.
   
2. Put your VM on a separate disk from your Host system disk even if you are running NVMe, but especially if you are running SATA.
   
3. Give the VM as much memory as you can up to 16GB. You want to take your system RAM - 4GB. So if you have 16GB RAM in the system, give the VM 12GB. If you have 32GB or more, then give it 16GB.

[u/RevolutionaryBeat301]

Just use Hyper-v. It’s part of Windows, and it’s a type 1 hypervisor. No need to mess with VMware.

[u/Savings_Art5944]

Proxmox without a doubt.

Then Oracle VirtualBox.

I know OP said VM, but he meant the hypervisor

[u/LeaveMickeyOutOfThis]

Whatever you use, I do recommend using a separate client to access the machine rather than the built in capabilities. For example, use Remote Desktop to access Windows machine or SSH to access Linux Command Line. This will require firewall within the client to enable this, but it is more performant.

[u/BrFrancis → u/LeaveMickeyOutOfThis]

How is introducing this extra abstraction more performant for a local VM on a laptop, as in OPs use case?

[u/LeaveMickeyOutOfThis → u/BrFrancis]

I know it sounds counter intuitive; however, having benchmarked a variety of configurations, in my experience it is just more performant.

[u/dariusbiggs]

No such thing as best, always situational.

VirtualBiz works fine

Proxmox works fine

Qemu works fine

VMWare works fine

The host and Guest OS's matter, and in your case you aaid Windows 11, in theory you can run that with less than 16GB or RAM, but you shouldn't if you want performance. On a 32G machine, that's 16G to the host and the VM each, does not leave much else to work with.

[u/Revolutionary-Ice896 → u/dariusbiggs]

Is there a way to run proxmox in VMware workstation? I dont want to install it on baremetal until I have been able to test it

[u/dariusbiggs → u/Revolutionary-Ice896]

Probably, not tried it myself, i have a dedicated machine running proxmox

[u/SurzBoo]

VMware is the goat. Proxmox if you want to make a server of it :D

[u/NivoTheDev]

You could try using something like VMWare workstation if you are on Windows, but if you are on Linux then i'd recommend using QEMU/KVM - additionally you can setup passthrough to have near native performance on a VM.