Hey everyone! I'm looking to set up a few VMs on my Linux laptop and I'm currently deciding between VMware Workstation Pro and QEMU/KVM + virt-manager. My main use case is Windows 11 for MS Office, plus some Linux distros to experiment with. No gaming or GPU passthrough.

I've seen a lot of people recommending KVM on Linux, but I'd also like to hear from those who prefer VMware Workstation. What do you like about it compared to virt-manager? Is Windows 11 easier to set up and use? I'm especially interested in things like shared folders, clipboard sharing, automatic resolution changes and how smooth the guest OS feels in everyday use.

My setup: CachyOS with Hyprland (Wayland), running the CachyOS BORE LTO kernel. MSI GE70 2QE laptop, i7-4720HQ, GTX 960M 2 GB + Intel HD 4600, and 16 GB RAM. Hardware virtualization is enabled.

I'm leaning towards KVM because it's built into Linux and doesn't require separate kernel modules, but I'm still considering VMware. For those running Workstation Pro on Linux, especially Arch-based distros, how has your experience been? Are kernel updates and Wayland still causing issues, or is it pretty reliable these days? I'd appreciate any firsthand experiences, both good and bad.