KDE Is Getting a Native Virtual Machine Manager Called 'Karton' (neowin.net) 32
A new virtual machine manager called Karton is being developed specifically for the KDE Plasma desktop, aiming to offer a seamless, Qt-native alternative to GNOME-centric tools like GNOME Boxes. Spearheaded by University of Waterloo student Derek Lin as part of Google Summer of Code 2025, Karton uses libvirt and Qt Quick to build a user-friendly, fully integrated VM experience, with features like a custom SPICE viewer, snapshot support, and a mobile-friendly UI expected by September 2025. Neowin reports: To feel right at home in KDE, Karton is being built with Qt Quick and Kirigami. It uses the libvirt API to handle virtual machines and could eventually work across different platforms. Right now, development is focused on getting the core parts in place. Lin is working on a new domain installer that ditches direct virt-install calls in favor of libosinfo, which helps detect OS images and generate the right libvirt XML for setting up virtual machines more precisely. He's still refining device configuration and working on broader hypervisor support. Another key part of the work is building a custom SPICE viewer using Qt Quick from scratch:
If you're curious, here's the list of specific deliverables Lin included in his GSoC proposal, though he notes the proposal itself is a bit outdated [...]. For those interested in the timeline, Lin's GSoC proposal says the official GSoC coding starts June 2, 2025. The goal is to have a working app ready by the midterm evaluation around July 14, 2025, with the final submission due September 1, 2025. You can learn more via KDE.org.
If you're curious, here's the list of specific deliverables Lin included in his GSoC proposal, though he notes the proposal itself is a bit outdated [...]. For those interested in the timeline, Lin's GSoC proposal says the official GSoC coding starts June 2, 2025. The goal is to have a working app ready by the midterm evaluation around July 14, 2025, with the final submission due September 1, 2025. You can learn more via KDE.org.
The letter K (Score:1)
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It's an impediment to new users.
If I go to Accessories, there's no Calculator. I need to read down to KCalc.
Imagine if MacOS had MCalculaor, MPages, MStickies or whatever. The iEverything is bad enough.
Or WNotepad etc on Windows.
It just doesn't make sense to me. As a development code name, of course, no limits.
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Shocked, I say.
Re: The letter K (Score:5, Informative)
Right click the menu/launcher and choose configure. "Show applications as..." defaults to name only, but you can choose description only (ie "calculator") or description (app name) or app name (description) where the parentheses are a minor heading so little under the main displayed thing. Changing the main displayed item also sorts the menu alpha by that so calculator would be under C not K for kcalc.
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Sorry to the moderator who gave me "overrated" for posting the solution to the exact thing that was annoying him. In the future, I will not help. Noted.
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Thanks for your suggestion. Don't bother about that moderation- could be a stuck mouse wheel. Let the meta-moderation process get him
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I hit the super key, type in "calc" and it shows me several available calculators, including kcalc which happens to be the the first and highlighted choice, and even says under it "Scientific Calculator." I doubt any Windows user would have a problem with that.
The K stuff has never bothered me. I use a mix of Mate, Gnome, and KDE apps. I don't want to learn a new desktop paradigm, so Gnome is out. I used to use Mate, but wayland support was lacking. I now use KDE Plasma and have no real desire to go bac
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I never understood why they called it KCalc, rather than Kalculator or just Kalc.
Re: The letter K (Score:1)
Old habbits (Score:2)
It really was starting to look a little better, but here comes the app-for-that idea-fairy that needs a Kasdf application developed because it either:
1) Wasn't made by us
2) Doesn't have a big enough K
It really is a good idea. Just wtf with the Ks.
And the article reads about GNOME and using boxes to spin up VMs....
No. Not everybody does that. There are already existing programs for that, and they work just fine. Stop with the ecosystem creating bullshit - this should always be a cross platform function no
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No. Not everybody does that.
I'd argue that literally nobody does that since Boxes has been broken for as long as I can remember.
Pretty sure anyone doing this kind of thing is using virt-manager.
Desperately Needed (Score:4, Informative)
What is desperately needed in this tool is the ability to create a network bridge in a couple mouse clicks using the primary network adapter. I've wanted to transition away from Virtual Box for years now, but bridge networking has held me back.
Virtual Box lets me create a bridge with a simple click on a single combo box. Done. KVM is WAY more complicated, and risks network destruction. The inability to easily create a network bridge is a deal breaker that keeps me (and therefore my clients) on Virtual Box.
Re: Desperately Needed (Score:2)
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Pretty sure bog standard virt-manager and libvirtd does that. I don't recall ever setting up the bridge manually.
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There are a few quirks with the interactions with whatever-your-vomitous-network-configuration-daemon-is, but it's not too terrible.
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Pretty sure bog standard virt-manager does that
Maybe it does it on newer versions, but I never got it working on the version that comes with Kubuntu 20.04 or earlier. I remember the option to bridge being there, but never working.
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It didn't work well for me on Devuan, I don't know why but I had to manually create a bridge. This was true while using both ufw and firewalld.
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True I suppose you can theoretically blow up your network connectivity, but counterpoint - if you're doing this sort of thing via a desktop environment, you're running it on your pc/laptop so it's not quite in the same league of "shit I have no way to remote into this box and no access to the datacenter" uh-o
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Why is the GUI the important bit ? (Score:2)
Surely one would write a VM manager with all the features described.
And add a basic GUI on top of it.
Then, if necessary, add other GUIs on top of it, in a variety of flavors.
This is like designing a car and crowing about how it's red, and much better than all those blue cars the other company makes.
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As others have mentioned, it has an unfortunate dearth of Ks in its name, which is problematic for certain fanatics.
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Having to tie the GUI to OS is El Stupido! The industry dearly needs a stateful GUI markup standard so we can have a GUI browser that has all the common GUI idioms we know and love [reddit.com] rather than keep mis-inventing them via the JavaScript Framework Sisyphus Cycle or hard-wiring them to the OS.
It wouldn't replace all needs for native GUI's, but a good portion of them, at least for ordinary data-centric CRUD. (Graphics designers and word-processors are probably outside its scope.)
The GUI browser would probably b
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As someone who ran a Slackware desktop personally for 10 years while managing Windows networks, and who now manages Windows clusters (Hyper-V and VMWare until Broadcom went silly)...
A GUI for management is one thing that Windows understands and gets nearly-right. Managing a cluster of VMs with a thousand settings each and exposing them in a GUI is child's play because everything is abstracted to a single visual interface.
By comparison, a CLI interface for managing VMs, containers, etc. is HORRENDOUS. Rega
Means "cardboard box" (Score:3)
In German.
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Re: Means "cardboard box" (Score:2)
Karton in Polish means cardboard box (Score:1)