Harvester: Virtualization for People Who’ve Outgrown VMware But Still Need VMs Not every setup is ready for Kubernetes. But also — not everyone wants to stay stuck with legacy hypervisors forever. Harvester sort of lands in the middle. It lets you run virtual machines and containers on bare metal, with built-in storage and networking, and it doesn’t make you beg for licenses or support keys. What’s strange — in a good way — is that it’s Kubernetes under the hood. But you don’t have to care. You

KVM + Cockpit: The Simple Way to Run VMs Without Going Full Enterprise Here’s the thing — if all you need is a handful of virtual machines running on a Linux box, you don’t need a full-blown virtualization suite. KVM is already there. It’s fast, native, and has been in the kernel for ages. The only problem? It’s not exactly friendly unless you enjoy XML files and virsh commands. That’s where Cockpit steps in. It doesn’t try to be a hypervisor. It’s just a clean web interface that lets you manage

Portainer CE: Docker and Kubernetes Without the Terminal Stress Containers are powerful. But they’re also a pain when you have to manage them all by hand. Portainer CE fixes that. It gives a simple web interface for working with Docker, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes — no endless YAML, no guessing CLI flags. It doesn’t try to be some all-in-one cloud platform. It’s just enough control, in the right place, at the right time. For people who know what they’re doing but want to save time (and sanity),

Proxmox VE: Virtualization That Gets Out of the Way (and Just Lets You Run Stuff) If you’ve ever used VMware or Hyper-V and felt boxed in — Proxmox VE feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a full-blown virtualization platform, but without licensing nightmares or closed ecosystems. Based on Debian, with a built-in web interface, Proxmox VE lets you manage virtual machines and containers side by side. No extra agents. No proprietary hypervisors. Just KVM, LXC, and a UI that actually works.