Hi, today switched from Windows to Linux completely. Whole day tweaking some apps. Generally, love it. Zorin flies on Gen7 i7 (8CORE) that is not OK for Windows 11.
Need to have a tiny VM for banking browsing only.
So in seconds started a VM in Gnome boxes. The thing is that there is no PAUSE button in any place. I want to keep the machine in "sleep" mode that will allow in one click to start it. I didn't install my Bodhi and run it as ISO, so don't want each time to go through setup keyboard and bla bla process.
So,
is there a way to really pause or however it called in Boxes.
what is strange that even if I force shutdown, in processes this littly heck keeps memory as it does in running state... what's that?
I think outright closing the VM window without shutting down the VM pauses it, but it apparently puts the VM's ram onto the SSD/HDD, which could be bad for the drive's long-term health (but maybe answers the second part of your question?)
Thank you for trying to help... Add to Favorites and Pause options are obviously simply missing... I just asked on GNOME forum. Sure if will have an answer I will let it know for Zorin people. May be it's something related to distro.
The Gnome documentation is not the best, to be honest... I've seen many instances of this where there are features missing or not documented very well.
Personally, I'd recommend using Virtual Machine Manager. It uses the same underlying technology as Gnome Boxes (KVM/QEMU) but it has a ton of features easily available, which makes things like this much easier. For instance:
I am trying to figure out... I am from Hyper-V environment :)...
From first suggestion for virt-manager i understood that it's just a GUI for management of VMs. So quickly found some info about KVM. Installed it it came with virt-manager inside. Run it. All what I need is a VM running from ISO. Created VM without HD. Thinking to assign ISO image to CD device for boot. Theoretically, it should be there (like add hardware option in serious things).
No GO. No CD rom... so I don't know the trick for making BOOT from ISO. At least I see a clear PAUSE button in virt-manager. Finally, uninstalled KVM, thinking to try... to install Boxes again. It makes easy to boot from ISO, then I guess the VM from boxes could be visible in virt-manager??? May be mistaken.
If you have a quick solution for booting from ISO and have a Pause button it would be fine. Linux world... always somethng little missing, but I like it... finally there are about always a solution. thanks.
What I do is download the .iso to Downloads. Then in virt-manager I click on the 'new' vm icon. I use Browse and use the drop-down arrow to select the .iso. Sometimes just trying to reboot the .iso will not work and you have to start all over again. The issue with virt manager is that it's default location for VMs is in /var. This can soon get eaten up, so I create a new storage 'pool' and point to that. I then click on the + symbol to create a new storage area (I usually go for the default 20 Gb, but depending on the distro I can take it up to 40 or 80 Gb using a folder I call 'storage' in my /home folder which is the largest partition on my 1 Tb HDD.
You can get a feel for what I do by watching one of my videos here (you only need to see the start of it). virt-manager will not work straight away, you need to logout and back in again before it will run, and then you will need to enter your login password to elevate you to root (administrator).
thank you very much for the detailed description. I will check your way to do a thing... so I understand you actually not installing any hypervisor? Should be something...
That is not all what needed... Virtualisation is enabled on this computer for many years. Hyper-V run on it... what I am saying HYPERVISOR layer should be installed in OS.. Virt-manager without HYPERVISOR is just a GUI for managing VMs running on hypervisor... Boxes actually is light and easy but missing pause feature that is a basic (for me :)). Sure will find something. May be guys on GNOME will suggest why the described in doc feature missing
What I assumed is theoretically possible in the description below... but in real life the VM from Boxes not appear in virt-manager... I will try to play uninstall/reinstall/reboot game ...
Add GNOME Boxes VM to virt-manager
Yes, it is possible to add a GNOME Boxes virtual machine to virt-manager. GNOME Boxes and virt-manager both utilize libvirt, which allows for the management of virtual machines across different interfaces. To achieve this, you need to configure virt-manager to connect to the user session rather than the default system session. Here's how you can do it:
Configure virt-manager to connect to user session : Open Virtual Machine Manager, select File > Add New Connection, and choose QEMU/KVM user session from the Hypervisor dropdown. This will allow virt-manager to access the VMs created by GNOME Boxes.
Access GNOME Boxes VMs in virt-manager : Once connected to the user session, your GNOME Boxes VMs should appear in the list within virt-manager. You can then manage them using the advanced features provided by virt-manager.
Considerations : While virt-manager offers more advanced configuration options, GNOME Boxes provides a simpler interface for basic VM management. Keep in mind that some advanced features, such as device passthrough, may not be available in GNOME Boxes.
Virtual Machine Manager a.k.a. virt manager is the graphical interface to manage virtual machines. Gnome Boxes is another GUI; no hypervisor there.
The hypervisor is KVM, which stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machines. It's built-in right into the Linux kernel, and it'll work as long as virtualization is enabled in the BIOS settings.
Technically, this means you do not need to install anything else. In practice, however, it's a lot easier to just install a few extra packages that make life easier. This is what both Virtual Machine Manager and Gnome Boxes use under the hood: libvirt.
Virtual machines handled by libvirt should be visible by any tool that can use it. For instance, you can create a virtual machine through Vagrant using libvirt as the hypervisor and it will be detected by Virtual Machine Manager. The easiest way is to create a configuration file for it at $HOME/.config/libvirt/libvirt.conf:
uri_default = "qemu:///system"
And then add your user to the libvirt group:
sudo usermod -aG libvirt $USER
You might need to restart for this to take effect.
Here is the answer I found Close the VM window without doing any internal shutdown. That will suspend it. I hope people from GNOME will answer the same.
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