Choosing Proxmox for the right application?

J

jgallaway81

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Aug 25, 2025
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Salutations. I'm a long time user of VirtualBox, and built a new system that I want to install a bare-metal hypervisor to run several guest OSs/VMs on. I'll be running one of the Linux flavors as a daily driver, Windows 7, 8, 10, & 11 for running support for friends and family, as well as Fusion360 for modelling, and a WinXP unit for story authoring and some simple computer graphics.

I had chosen Proxmox to run all this on, but as I dig more into it and work on getting my first VMs setup, I'm beginning to thing this isn't the right solution, as I want to run the VMs directly as opposed to over a network connection.

Can anyone tell me if what I am looking to do IS something I can setup Proxmox to do, or suggest a better system for my intentions?

I have PVE setup on my system already, I have everything I need to switch to ESXi, but I think that's going to give me the same issues.

I had expected Proxmox would allow me to simply click on an icon and load up the VM I wanted to use, like I'm used to with VBox or VMware player.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

I thank you for your time and appreciate any suggestions or recommendations you might
have.
 
Your best option for your use case is VirtualBox or VMware player because you want desktop virtualization with window manager integration and good graphics performance. This is not the use case for Proxmox VE, Hyper-V or VMware ESXi, so you're already at the best option IMHO.
 
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jgallaway81 said:
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Click to expand...

There is the idea of a "Developer Workstation": https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Workstations_with_Proxmox_VE_and_X11

This is the beauty of Debian as the foundation: you can do with it whatever you want. Of course you are leaving the supported area and to find help for specific problems might be difficult.


That said..., personally I am fighting with this for some years now. I was seeking for an alternative for Qubes-OS https://www.qubes-os.org/ - "A reasonably secure operating system" which uses Xen to put individual (sets of) applications into isolated "Domains". It comes with some really valuable glue to make it usable. This latter aspect is not available for the following approach:

I do have Proof-of-Concept on a NUC; this specific one is too small, both CPU- and RAM-wise, but for a PoC it works. The Mini-PC runs PVE plus a Desktop Environment (Sway on Wayland). I can start some VMs, open a SPICE session for each, put them on separate virtual Desktops and toggle fullscreen. Some machines need manual adjustment of the "inside" resolution, some work automagically correct.

After preparing the above I can switch between them with a "<meta>-number" hotkey. And everything in "4K" :-)

Unfortunately my approach is not really convenient. There is too much to do manually. While the VMs could start automatically I need to login in, open my primary browser, log in as root, open Spice, move those windows to their desktops, log in to each one, adjust "some" settings and so on. While the clipboard does work, copying files needs a central instance (aka fileserver) to work - including credentials to access it.
 
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