Open-source alternatives to VirtualBuddy

OrbStack is a native macOS application that replaces Docker Desktop, providing an all-in-one environment for running Docker containers, full Linux virtual machines, and local Kubernetes clusters. It runs Linux VMs directly on the macOS hypervisor framework for near-native performance, uses VirtioFS for fast bidirectional file sharing between macOS and Linux, and leverages Rosetta for near-native x86 emulation on Apple Silicon. The system assigns predictable local domain names to containers and VMs with automatic HTTPS certificate generation, forwards ports via event-driven updates, and stores

Lima is a virtualization engine designed to provision and manage lightweight Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD virtual machines. It functions as a comprehensive virtual machine manager that leverages native hypervisors and system emulation to provide isolated environments for container development, cross-architecture testing, and secure sandboxing. The project distinguishes itself through its template-driven provisioning system, which allows users to define and automate environment configurations via local files or remote URL schemes. It integrates deeply with host systems by providing automated file

virt-manager is a graphical management interface for configuring hypervisors, virtual machine instances, and containers via the libvirt API. It provides a desktop environment for managing KVM-based virtualization on Linux hosts, acting as a centralized controller for both local and remote hypervisors. The project distinguishes itself through integrated management of the surrounding virtualization infrastructure. It includes dedicated interfaces for virtual network administration to connect guests to physical hardware and virtual storage management for organizing disk volumes into logical pool

Cua is an agent benchmarking and desktop automation platform designed to evaluate autonomous agents and execute repetitive tasks within isolated, virtualized environments. It provides a framework for provisioning consistent workspaces and measuring agent performance against standardized desktop operations. The platform distinguishes itself by integrating virtual machine orchestration with headless interaction capabilities. By leveraging hypervisor-based virtualization, it runs operating systems at near-native speeds, while its automation layer injects commands directly into application proces

xhyve is a macOS virtual machine manager and virtualization tool that leverages the native hypervisor framework to run guest operating systems in userspace. It provides a virtualization layer for executing guest systems with hardware acceleration. The project features a hardware pass-through hypervisor that maps physical host devices directly to guest virtual machines to increase performance. It includes a remote framebuffer server and VNC access to enable interaction with the guest display and input devices from external devices. The tool covers virtual hardware emulation for storage, netwo

vphone-cli is a command line interface for booting virtual iOS devices using Apple's native virtualization framework. It provides a sandboxed virtual mobile environment and tools for executing iOS system images on a host operating system. The project includes a firmware flashing utility capable of building signed ramdisks and applying custom firmware patches to virtual device boot chains. It facilitates the installation of custom firmware variants to remove system security restrictions. The toolset covers virtual device provisioning through system image restoration and security blob retrieva

LXD is a system container manager and virtual machine manager that provides a unified interface for running full Linux systems. It acts as a container cluster orchestrator, an image format converter, and an infrastructure manager that exposes control through a REST API and language-specific SDKs. The project distinguishes itself by providing a unified container and virtual machine abstraction, treating both as generic instances within a single management layer. It supports distributed cluster coordination to synchronize state and distribute workloads across multiple physical nodes. The syste

LXD is a unified platform for managing both system containers and virtual machines through a single REST API and command-line interface. It provides a programmatic HTTP interface for controlling the full lifecycle of instances, enabling automation and integration with external tools. The system runs unprivileged containers with per-instance UID/GID mappings, seccomp filters, and AppArmor profiles for kernel-level isolation, while supporting multiple storage backends including directory, Btrfs, LVM, ZFS, Ceph, LINSTOR, and TrueNAS through a unified driver interface. The platform distinguishes

This is a virtualization tool designed to run macOS guest operating systems, such as Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra, inside VirtualBox on Windows, Linux, or Mac hardware. It provides a system for deploying these operating systems on x86 CPUs using official installation files. The project includes specialized utilities to manage EFI and NVRAM settings, enabling the emulation of device serial numbers and board identifiers to allow connectivity for cloud services and messaging. It also features a configurator for adjusting CPUID profiles and display resolutions to ensure hardware compatibilit

Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.

seL4 is a formally verified microkernel whose C implementation is backed by machine-checked mathematical proofs of correctness, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It enforces strict isolation between processes through hardware-enforced address space separation and a capability-based access control system, where each process holds explicit rights only to the resources it has been granted. The kernel exposes hardware resources through a minimal API of system calls that manage threads, address spaces, and inter-process communication, with synchronous IPC supporting sender-identifying b

86Box is a low-level x86 hardware emulator and vintage PC simulator designed to replicate early IBM PC compatibles. It provides virtualized environments for executing legacy operating systems, such as MS-DOS and early versions of Windows, by simulating processors and system designs ranging from the 8086 through the Pentium era. The project distinguishes itself through cycle-accurate processor simulation and high-fidelity hardware emulation. This includes the ability to route retro MIDI audio data to emulated hardware modules or external synthesizers to achieve authentic audio playback from le

Multipass is a virtual machine lifecycle controller and manager designed to create and orchestrate lightweight Ubuntu instances on a local workstation. It functions as a cross-platform hypervisor wrapper that provides a local cloud development environment for simulating cloud deployments. The system utilizes a hypervisor-abstraction layer and driver-based backend resolution to manage virtual machines across different host operating systems using native virtualization backends. It enables the simulation of cloud instance behavior through the injection of cloud-init metadata and initialization

Quickemu is a command-line utility designed to automate the deployment and management of virtual machine instances. It functions as an automated provisioner that handles the acquisition of operating system images and the generation of optimized configuration files, allowing users to launch virtualized environments with minimal manual setup. The tool leverages hardware-accelerated emulation to execute virtual machines, mapping host-native resources directly to the guest environment to maintain performance. It utilizes shell-scripted orchestration to manage the lifecycle of these instances, sto

This project provides a functional package manager and a reproducible build system designed to ensure identical build inputs always produce the same outputs. It serves as the foundation for a declarative Linux distribution where the entire system state is defined in a configuration file, enabling predictable deployments and full-system rollbacks. The system uses a deterministic functional language and a lazy-evaluation expression engine to manage software dependencies and isolate build environments. It distinguishes itself through a content-addressable store that allows multiple versions of s

Waydroid is a containerized mobile runtime that executes a full Android operating system directly on Linux desktop environments. By utilizing Linux kernel namespaces, it isolates the mobile environment while sharing the host kernel to provide native-like performance and hardware access for mobile applications. The project distinguishes itself through deep integration with the host system, bridging mobile display buffers to native desktop windows and translating host input events into mobile gestures. It enables multi-window management, allowing mobile applications to run alongside native desk

m1n1 is a low-level bootloader for ARM64-based Apple Silicon hardware. It serves as a firmware tool and experimentation environment for loading external kernels and non-native operating systems. The project enables the execution of concatenated binary payloads containing kernels, device trees, and ramdisks. It provides a platform for firmware experimentation and the deployment of custom kernels on Apple Silicon chips. The system covers low-level hardware abstraction, including memory-mapped register access, device tree transmission, and stage-based bootloading. It also includes UART-based se

Unlocker is a patching tool designed to enable the installation and booting of macOS guest operating systems on non-Apple hardware. It functions as a macOS guest enabler by modifying virtualization software binaries to bypass hardware restrictions and support OS combinations that are not supported by default. The project provides a mechanism to emulate Apple-specific device signatures by intercepting calls between the virtual machine manager and the hardware. It also includes a driver image provider that delivers ISO images containing the necessary utilities and drivers for guest installation

WebVM is a browser-based virtualization platform that executes a full Linux operating system directly within a web browser. By leveraging WebAssembly and client-side virtualization, it simulates hardware to run native applications and development toolchains without requiring server-side infrastructure or remote desktop configurations. The platform distinguishes itself by providing a portable computing workspace that operates entirely on the client side. It includes capabilities for bridging virtual environments to private networks, allowing secure access to internal resources directly from th

Colima is a command-line utility that provides lightweight container runtimes and local Kubernetes orchestration by managing isolated virtual machine environments. It functions as a virtualization manager that abstracts the underlying container engine, allowing users to run containerized applications and system workloads on non-native operating systems without the overhead of heavy desktop software. The project distinguishes itself through its support for hardware-accelerated workloads, enabling direct GPU passthrough to virtual machines for high-performance machine learning tasks. It offers

Winboat is a virtualization manager that provides a graphical interface for automating Windows installations and running Windows environments on Linux. It functions as a system for integrating Windows applications directly into a Linux desktop, allowing them to appear as native windows. The platform utilizes hardware-accelerated virtualization to manage guest operating systems and includes utilities for mapping physical USB hardware directly into virtual environments. It supports cross-platform data exchange by mounting host directories within the guest system, enabling direct file access bet

Docker-OSX is a containerized virtualization platform that enables the execution of full operating systems within isolated environments. By leveraging hardware-accelerated hypervisors and machine emulation, the project allows guest operating systems to run with near-native performance, effectively mimicking dedicated physical hardware within a container. The platform distinguishes itself by providing a complete infrastructure for remote desktop and headless management, allowing users to interact with virtualized graphical environments over network protocols. It supports advanced hardware inte

Vagrant is a virtual machine environment manager and infrastructure as code tool used to create and configure consistent development environments. It acts as a virtual machine provisioner and hypervisor abstraction layer, allowing users to define machine specifications and automate software installation on guest systems via declarative configuration files. The project enables cross-hypervisor orchestration by decoupling the command interface from specific virtualization backends. It ensures environment consistency through the distribution of pre-configured machine images and the orchestration

The Google Cloud Go Client Library is a set of Go packages and a software development kit used to interact with Google Cloud platform services and APIs. It provides the primary means for Go applications to integrate with cloud service endpoints through simplified language patterns and automated API request handling. The project features specialized libraries for managing identity and access via service accounts, API keys, and environment-based credential resolution. It includes dedicated SDKs for programmatic resource orchestration and the deployment and management of serverless functions, co

Harvester is a hyperconverged infrastructure software platform that combines compute, storage, and networking into a single system for managing virtualized environments on bare metal servers. It functions as a virtualization management platform and KVM hypervisor manager, providing a centralized interface to orchestrate the full lifecycle of virtual machines. The project distinguishes itself by integrating Longhorn distributed block storage to provide redundant, software-defined storage and a bare metal provisioning tool for automated deployment. This allows for the orchestration of infrastru

Auto-unlocker is a collection of utilities designed to modify virtualization software libraries to bypass system restrictions on guest operating systems. It primarily functions as a binary patcher that enables the selection and booting of macOS guests within VMware. The project modifies core system libraries to unlock hidden operating system selection options and bypass boot checks for unsupported guests. It also includes a guest tools installer that downloads and applies the driver packages necessary for hardware integration and performance. The toolset provides capabilities for managing vi

Microsandbox is a microVM sandbox runtime and hardware-isolated code executor designed for running untrusted code. It functions as an embedded virtual machine manager that allows applications to spawn and control lightweight virtual machines directly within code without the need for a background daemon. The system provides a secure execution environment for AI agents by exposing server controls that allow them to execute tools and manage files. It utilizes standard container image formats and volume workflows to initialize guest virtual machines and implements a secret management mechanism th