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1) Is there a way for me to install VirtualBox as a non root user? I compiled it from the sources but cannot find a way to load the kernel modules it requires? Is there anyway to make it run?

2) Is there any other virtualization software you have ever installed on linux successfully as a non root user, VMWare, Parallels, etc.?

The aim is to run Windows as a virtual machine with more than 16GB RAM.

Bests, Cetin

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    This question appears to be off-topic because you should be asking your systems administrator to help you.
    – Bryan
    Jul 17, 2013 at 13:47

3 Answers 3

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If I recall correctly qemu doesn't need any kernel modules and therefore doesn't need root access. However, you're not going to get Windows running in qemu.

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  • windows WILL run on qemu. performance won't be great, and if he needs more than 16gb of ram.. well performance would be important. I'm also not sure if x64 is supported Mar 21, 2010 at 3:31
  • Qemu will work with windows and it does not require any kernel modules so it will work without root. However, without the kernel modules, the performance will be much slower because everything will need to be emulated in software.
    – sybreon
    Mar 21, 2010 at 12:04
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Most virutalization software use some kernel helpers to take use of various hardware features that may help virtual machine performance much. Without that only full software emulation may be done, which is slow (virtual machine many times slower than the host). IIRC qemu provides such full virtualisation mode, but it is not quite useful because of the performance.

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Only root can load kernel modules, so VirtualBox can not be ran on linux without having root access. I suspect that any virtualisation system will also require some set up as root.

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