I have minimal because of all the debate about snaps.
Well, I might sound funny now, but the easiest way to play with snaps and learn about them without installing all of them on your system is probably in an lxd container (which you would need to install via a snap package 
)…
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There is an interesting thread next door here on the forum that might give you some insight…
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Personally, if you want to try virtual machines I still recommend VirtualBox.
Downloads and instructions can be found here:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
Obviously, this is not the snap version which I installed on Kubuntu.
Using VirtualBox to try virtual machine’s, command’s, snap’s, etc…I’m sure it has it’s issue’s but what doesn’t. Sound’s like VirtualBox is best for now.
That will help me face whatever fears I might have, due to all the debate.
Thank ya’ll.
Virtual machines are crazy useful. Sometimes they’re a little more difficult to do the same thing as you would do on bare metal, but you can do almost anything.
We regularly use them at work. We have a very custom legacy app with decades of development that’s built in Microsoft Access that would take so much effort to turn into something we could use in Kubuntu (our preferred flavor), so we needed another solution. We use VirtualBox to run Windows within Kubuntu, which allows folks to use this legacy app. It’s also allowed us to use a thing here or there that we can’t get to work in Kubuntu, like this custom software this one manufacturer that we have recently started to work with supplies. This software works with a proprietary USB device. We can use USB passthrough so that the virtual machine has access to the host machine’s USB port and it works just as if there was a separate Windows machine.
That said, containers are a LOT faster to set up and deal with. If you’re just doing command line stuff, I would absolutely wholeheartedly recommend LXD over VirtualBox.
Would there be any issue with using the non-snap VirtualBox to test the snap LXD?
To be fair, that’s like virtualization within virtualization, which could be problematic. I have never tried it before, honestly. Try it out! The worst that could happen is your virtual machine dies, which has no effect on your host system.
Here, I did it for you:
Left is the 24.04 container running inside the 25.04 host. I listed the Snaps to show the clear difference between them.
On that left side, I’m running tmux, which is what is making for the two windows (panes in tmux parlance to be technical), with btop running in the lower pane.
If you look at the top of the shot, you’ll see it’s all running in VirtualBox.
Awesome
While that was going…
Did you notice anything obvious like lagging or anything taking longer than normal to open?
Not really. I’ve got 32GB of RAM on my host machine. 8GB is allocated to my Windows VM which was running at the time I did this. The Lubuntu VM only has 2GB. I didn’t really have a lot going on in Lubuntu, but even with all those (supposedly low performance) Snaps running in a container, no less, I could still use the thing. Look at the btop output. On top of that, Firefox was still working nicely and I had plenty of RAM left on the host.
Double AWESOME…
Yep, I think I’m going with VirtualBox at least temporary.
Other questions I have are things like able to access files on the main Desktop from within the VM/Container and saving files created in the VM onto the main Desktop etc…pretty much things I can find out by actually trying it.
That’s not something I do regularly, but that’s done through the Guest Additions. Read about it on the VirtualBox site.
I think using VirtualBox is a good idea as a first jumping off point to try virtual machines and see what they are capable of.
If you believe this issue has been resolved, please mark the relevant post as the solution.
As an aside, I have not tested running LXD as a snap inside a VM but now I might give it a go 
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I should give all my host RAM to the Lubuntu VM and see how many containers I can run inside one another before things go awry.
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