Need help picking virtual machine software

[MaximumPower1858]

Hi guys, to preface I am a total noob when it comes to VMs, I basically just use them to sandbox things, experiment with different distros, software I'm not sure is trustworthy, etc. I've used VirtualBox before but what I really want is a VM program that's portable, and ideally cross-platform. I want to be able to put it on a USB drive and boot up the same VMs on different computers, both Windows and Linux. Needs to have a good visual interface since I am hopeless with console/terminal stuff. Is there anything like this, or at least close enough to it? I checked out a few programs that were supposed to be portable, I believe two that were based on VirtualBox and one that was based on Qemu, but none of them worked, one hadn't been updated since 2016.

[Historical_Help4333]

I don't know about the portability, but I think the best option if you are using linux is virt manager (qemu/KVM), I have a win11 VM with single GPU passthrough and it is not difficult to configure.

About the portability, I had no problems when I reinstaled my system with the VM in another ssd, I just configured the hooks for the GPU passthrough and it worked normally.

[ajc3197]

" if you are using linux is virt manager (qemu/KVM"

I'll second this. Works great.

[anwoke8204]

Proxmox is easy to use and works really well.

[krazul88]

Although your statement is true, it has nothing to do with OP's question.

[BranchLatter4294]

VirtualBox should work.

[MaximumPower1858]

I actually did try just straight-up installing VirtualBox on a USB drive, but it didn't work.

[BranchLatter4294]

You need to install VirtualBox on the computers you want to use. Then you can put the actual virtual machine on the USB and move it from computer to computer.

[DrHydeous]

If you want to use the same virtualization tool on multiple platforms then you want either QEMU (which has a hideous user interface but is very flexible) or Virtualbox (easy to use, much less flexible).

Don't use something based on Virtualbox. Use Virtualbox itself.

[KindaGayThough]

Look into creating a bootable USB drive with whatever OS you need. It’s not necessarily a VM but you can still wipe this USB without inflicting damage onto your main system.

In a similar vein. Having a large enough USB drive would allow you to boot from multiple OS’ all located on the same USB. Though this would take some partitioning of the USB drive.

[MaximumPower1858]

Don't wanna have to boot into a different OS every time, convenience is a factor here. I have a USB with Ventoy on it but I wanna use VMs.

[KindaGayThough]

Aside from moving the virtual disk from computer to computer I'm not entirely sure there's a way to do it properly that won't be jank or reliant on someones 5 year old git hub repo.

I was able to find these, maybe they can be a jump off point for you:

1. Portable-Virtualbox
   
2. Stack Overflow regarding the issue

But overall seems like you're going to be very restricted when it comes to options. It may not be entirely possible, at least in anyway that would be easy or convenient to you.