Desktop virtualisation
Ease of setup
Installing the software and a guest OS.
Creating virtual machines is often the most complex task you do with these programs, so how easy and flexible are they in this task? Any program will enable you to create a virtual disk and then boot from an ISO image as if it were an optical disc, from which you then run the standard installation process.
Beyond that, some of these make the process simpler, or give you more choices. How easy are they to use when creating a new virtual machine and how flexible are they? Before that, how easy are they to install in the first place?
Most of the candidates in this month’s Roundup can be installed from your distro’s package manager, but some need extra steps to be performed before they’re ready to use. If you’re a serious user of virtualisation then a little preparatory work is fine, but not so much if you just want to spin up a live DVD to see how a particular distro looks – or fire up Windows to run the occasional program.