8 Useful Free And Open Source Virtualization Tools
LinuxLinks, Monday, April 21st, 2025
A Type 1 hypervisor is known as native or bare-metal. With this type, the hypervisor runs directly on the host's hardware to control the hardware resources and to manage guest operating systems. In other words, the software hypervisor does not require an additional underlying operating system.
A Type 2 hypervisor, or hosted hypervisor, interacts with the underlying host machine hardware through the host machine's operating system. You install it on the machine, where it runs as an application. The Type 2 hypervisor negotiates with the operating system to obtain underlying system resources. The hypervisor lets the host hardware operate multiple virtual machines independent of each other and share abstracted resources among those virtual machines.
This roundup focuses on Type 2 hypervisors. We also include GUI frontends and wrappers to view, access, and manage remote and virtual systems.