Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to VM-curator – a TUI alternative to libvirt and virt-manager

I've long wanted to harness QEMU/KVM for my desktop virtual machines, but I'm befuddled by virt-manager's lack of support for working NVIDIA 3D acceleration, dogmatic embrace of ugly XML, and the puzzling UI decision of having to click what seems like 15 buttons to attach an ISO to a VM image. When I further learned that NVIDIA's broken 3D acceleration is the fault of libvirt as opposed to QEMU's virtio driver, I had an idea... Behold, vm-curator! A fast and friendly VM management TUI written in Rust. You can create, configure, organize, and manage VMs directly with QEMU. No libvert. No…

VM-curator is a terminal-based tool for managing QEMU/KVM virtual machines on Linux desktops, written in Rust. It lets users create, configure, and organize VMs directly without libvirt or XML configuration files. The… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1
Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines▲144
hey guys. the other day i was migrating hosting providers and i just needed something not too heavy and convenient to spin up my backups for awhile and realised there is almost nothing out there. kimchi hasn't been updated for years and cockpit is heavy. so here's something i came up with in a couple hours because of a sudden urge, nothing fancy just basic creation with cloud init, lifecycle management and image/storage, but it's modern-ish and it compiles to a 8.4mb binary inclusive of the embedded web UI, CLI and API, and only dep is libvirt.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
Sub-millisecond VM sandboxes using CoW memory forking▲311
I wanted to see how fast an isolated code sandbox could start if I never had to boot a fresh VM. So instead of launching a new microVM per execution, I boot Firecracker once with Python and numpy already loaded, then snapshot the full VM state. Every execution after that creates a new KVM VM backed by a `MAP_PRIVATE` mapping of the snapshot memory, so Linux gives me copy-on-write pages automatically. That means each sandbox starts from an already-running Python process inside a real VM, runs the code, and exits. These are real KVM VMs, not containers: separate guest kernel, separate guest…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
3
Vicinae – A native, Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux▲181
Hi HN! I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power. Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great. To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
Artifact Keeper – Open-Source Artifactory/Nexus Alternative in Rust▲166
I'm a software engineer who keeps getting pulled into DevOps no matter how hard I try to escape it. I recently moved into a Lead DevOps Engineer role writing tooling to automate a lot of the pain away. On my own time outside of work, I built Artifact Keeper — a self-hosted artifact registry that supports 45+ package formats. Security scanning, SSO, replication, WASM plugins — it's all in the MIT-licensed release. No enterprise tier. No feature gates. No surprise invoices. Your package managers — pip, npm, docker, cargo, helm, go, all of them — talk directly to it using their native…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
5
VirtualProg▲74
A faster, simpler alternative to bulky VM managers.
Apr 2026 · makeprog.com · its alternatives →
6
Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig▲196
Minimalist, dependency-free virtual machine sandbox for microcontrollers and other resource-constrained devices. Single C file, no dynamic memory allocations, asynchronous design, pure C99 - ringtailsoftware/uvm32
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
7
microvm – a minimalist machine type for QEMU inspired by Firecracker▲145
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly▲207
To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
A small virtual machine written in C▲212
"interesting" VM in C. Let's see how this goes. Contribute to tekknolagi/carp development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
Vdm, a sane alternative to e.g. Git submodules▲100
Hey folks! I've been working on something on & (mostly) off for a little over a year, and picked it back up recently because of yet another related frustration at work. I've spent a lot of time ripping out git submodules from repos my teams use, but I've spent an equally large amount of time wondering why there doesn't seem to be a better option for managing arbitrary dependencies across repos in the Year of Our Lord 2024. So, I put together a really early version of such an arbitrary-dependency manager. It's called vdm, and you can find it in the linked URL above & below. I'm sharing mostly…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
AVR-VM – VM with JIT-compiler for ATMega32 written in Rust▲78
VM with JIT-compiler for ATMega32 written in Rust. Contribute to MackieLoeffel/avr-vm development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
Holos – QEMU/KVM with a compose-style YAML, GPUs and health checks▲56
I got tired of libvirt XML and Vagrant's Ruby/reload dance for single-host VM stacks, so I built a compose-style runtime directly on QEMU/KVM. What's there: GPU passthrough as a first-class primitive (VFIO, OVMF, per-instance EFI vars), healthchecks that gate depends_on over SSH, socket-multicast L2 between VMs with no root and no bridge config, cloud-init wired through the YAML, Dockerfile support for provisioning. What it's not: Kubernetes. No clustering, no live migration, no control plane. Single host. Prototype, but I'm running it on real hardware. Curious what breaks for…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
Arclight▲72
An open source server virtualization management solution
2022 · its alternatives →
14
I integrated my from-scratch TCP/IP stack into the xv6-riscv OS▲147
Hi HN, To truly understand how operating systems and network protocols work, I decided to combine two classic learning tools: the xv6 teaching OS and a from-scratch TCP/IP stack. I'm excited to share the result: my own from-scratch TCP/IP networking stack running directly inside the xv6-riscv (https://github.com/pandax381/xv6-riscv-net) kernel. The project uses a modern virtio-net driver, allowing it to run seamlessly in QEMU and communicate with the host machine. Key features: - From-Scratch Stack: The core is powered by microps…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
15
High-order Virtual Machine (HVM) – A Parallel Functional Runtime▲150
HVM1 (2022): a massively parallel, optimal functional runtime in Rust - HigherOrderCO/HVM1
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
VimLM – A Local, Offline Coding Assistant for Vim▲93
VimLM is a local, offline coding assistant for Vim. It’s like Copilot but runs entirely on your machine—no APIs, no tracking, no cloud. - Deep Context: Understands your codebase (current file, selections, references). - Conversational: Iterate with follow-ups like "Add error handling". - Vim-Native: Keybindings like `Ctrl-l` for prompts, `Ctrl-p` to replace code. - Inline Commands: `!include` files, `!deploy` code, `!continue` long responses. Perfect for privacy-conscious devs or air-gapped environments. Try it: ``` pip install vimlm vimlm ```…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
17
Video Commander▲87
I've been building open-source tools in the video/multimedia space for 10+ years. Finally shipped the commercial product I always wanted to exist — Video Commander, a desktop app that consolidates FFmpeg, ffprobe, MediaInfo, VMAF and more into a single workspace where you can inspect, encode and analyze video. Built with Tauri + Rust backend, React frontend. FFmpeg and VMAF. Not a cool AI/LLM project, just a tool I've been heads-down building over the last six months. Happy to answer any questions!
Apr 2026 · video-commander.com · its alternatives →
18
krunvm – Create and run lightweight VMs from OCI images▲82
Create microVMs from OCI images. Contribute to slp/krunvm development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
Bhvr, a Bun and Hono and Vite and React Starter▲128
Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!
2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →
20
Zxc – Rust TLS proxy with tmux and Vim as UI, BurpSuite alternative▲106
Ditch Burp Suite’s bloat for zxc, a Rust-built, terminal-based proxy that uses tmux and Vim to intercept HTTP/S and WebSocket traffic. It captures requests for debugging, security testing, or tweaking—fast and lean. # Key Features - Disk Wizardry: Stashes massive datasets on disk-100k+ entries without breaking a sweat. - Addons: Boost your workflow with default support for ffuf and sqlmap, or craft your own addons for extra fun. - Buffer Tweaks: Edit variables in a popup (e.g., b:host, b:scheme) in Interceptor/Repeater to twist requests. - Config Control: TOML files for global…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
21LV
Launch VM workloads securely and instantaneously, without VMs▲12
Hello HN! We've been working on a new hypervisor https://kwarantine.xyz that can run strongly isolated containers. This is still a WIP, but we wanted to give the community an idea about our approach, its benefits, and various use cases it unlocks. Today, VMs are used to host containers, and make up for the lack of strong security as well as kernel isolation in containers. This work adds this missing security piece in containers. We plan on launching a free private beta soon. Meanwhile, we'd deeply appreciate any feedback, and happy to answer any questions here or on our slack…
2021 · its alternatives →
22
Codeium: Free Copilot Alternative for Vim / Neovim▲94
I'm Varun from the Codeium team. After support for VSCode, Jetbrains, Jupyter, and Colab, we are super excited to bring free AI-powered code autocomplete to Vim and Neovim. And in the spirit of Show HN, we have a playground version for anyone to try the tech in the browser without any installation (https://www.codeium.com/playground)! We also made the vim client open source and are open to contributions.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
23
Vas-quod – A minimal Linux container runtime written in Rust▲110
:aerial_tramway: Minimal linux container runtime. Contribute to flouthoc/vas-quod development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
24
Transient – A tool for creating VMs for testing and development▲17
A wrapper for QEMU allowing the creation of virtual machines with shared folder, ssh, and disk creation support. - GitHub - ALSchwalm/transient: A wrapper for QEMU allowing the creation of virtual machines with shared folder, ssh, and disk creation support.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →