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A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Unlike an emulator, the guest executes most instructions ...
A virtual machine implements functionality of a (physical) computer with an operating system. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a hypervisor or virtual machine monitor. [2] Software executed on these virtual machines is separated from the underlying hardware resources.
The creation and management of virtual machines has also been called "platform virtualization", or "server virtualization", more recently. [2] [3] Platform virtualization is performed on a given hardware platform by host software (a control program), which creates a simulated computer environment, a virtual machine (VM), for its guest software ...
The physical, "real-world" hardware running the VM is generally referred to as the 'host', and the virtual machine emulated on that machine is generally referred to as the 'guest'. A host can emulate several guests, each of which can emulate different operating systems and hardware platforms.
GNOME Boxes was initially introduced as beta software in GNOME 3.3 (development branch for 3.4) as of Dec 2011, [5] and as a preview release in GNOME 3.4. [6] Its primary functions were as a virtual machine manager, remote desktop client (over VNC), and remote filesystem browser, utilizing the libvirt, libvirt-glib, and libosinfo technologies. [7]
A virtual machine is less efficient than an actual machine when it accesses the host hard drive indirectly. When multiple VMs are concurrently running on the hard drive of the actual host, adjunct virtual machines may exhibit a varying and/or unstable performance (speed of execution and malware protection).
[8] [9] For some guest operating systems, a "Guest Additions" package of device drivers and system applications is available, [10] [11] which typically improves performance, especially that of graphics, and allows changing the resolution of the guest OS automatically when the window of the virtual machine on the host OS is resized.
Virtual machine instructions process data in local variables using a main model of computation, typically that of a stack machine, register machine, or random access machine often called the memory machine. Use of these three methods is motivated by different tradeoffs in virtual machines vs physical machines, such as ease of interpreting ...