Virtual Machine Manager is the graphical front-end to libvirt. It gives you a VM list, a creation wizard, and a console viewer, and it manages remote hosts as easily as local ones.

What it is good at

The creation wizard is genuinely the easiest way to make a first virtual machine. It picks sensible defaults per guest operating system, which matters because the defaults determine whether the guest performs well.

Console access over SPICE or VNC, integrated so you click a VM and get its screen.

Remote hosts. Add a connection with a qemu+ssh:// URI and manage VMs on a server from your desktop. One window can hold several hosts, which is where it becomes more convenient than SSHing in and using virsh.

What it is not

virt-manager exposes a subset of what libvirt supports. When you need something it does not offer, edit the XML:

virsh edit myvm

That is not a limitation to work around so much as the intended division: the GUI covers the common cases, the XML covers everything.

Installing

sudo apt install virt-manager        # Debian and Ubuntu
sudo dnf install virt-manager        # Fedora
sudo pacman -S virt-manager          # Arch

You also need the libvirt daemon running and your user in the libvirt group, then a new login session for the group to take effect.

Two settings worth getting right

virtio for disk and network. The wizard’s defaults are usually correct for a recognised guest OS, and worth confirming under Customize before installing. Emulated devices work with anything and are considerably slower.

Enough memory and CPU. Easy to change later, and changing it means shutting the guest down.

Command line equivalent

Everything the wizard does is available through virt-install:

sudo virt-install \
  --name debian13 --memory 4096 --vcpus 4 \
  --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/debian13.qcow2,size=40,bus=virtio \
  --network network=default,model=virtio \
  --cdrom /path/to/debian-13.iso \
  --os-variant debian13

Our virt-manager and virsh guide covers both interfaces, and the KVM stack explainer covers what is underneath.

Verify Your Download

Most people should install from their distribution repository. Source releases are on GitHub.

Mirror	Region	Download
virt-manager (Official) Primary	Global	Download
GitHub Releases	Global	Download

Virtual Machine Manager 5.1.0

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