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KDE’s Virtual Machine Manager Moves Forward
Quoting: KDE’s Virtual Machine Manager Moves Forward —
Karton, KDE’s in-progress virtual machine manager, continues to move forward with several new updates as of August 2025. For the uninitiated, the project, still not feature-complete, aims to deliver a Qt-native alternative to GTK-based tools widely adopted among Linux users, such as GNOME Boxes and virt-manager.
According to Derek Lin, Kartoon’s lead developer, one of the most important changes in this cycle is the removal of the dependency on virt-install. Instead, it now generates libvirt domain XML directly, using libosinfo to identify the installation media and fill in the required configuration details, such as UUIDs, MAC addresses, and virtual hardware setup.
Another big focus has been the move away from relying on virt-viewer. In light of this, Karton now includes its own SPICE client and viewer built with Qt. It handles display rendering, input forwarding, and audio streams, with support for fullscreen and basic resizing. However, performance and scalability still require improvement.