The best open source alternative to VMware Workstation Player is VirtualBox. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to VMware Workstation Player and many of them is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to VMware Workstation Player are WinBoat, QEMU, KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and virt-manager.
Open source VirtualBox offers powerful x86/AMD64 virtualization available freely under GNU GPL v2. Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris hosts. Supports a vast array of guest OS like Windows, Linux, Solaris. Portable, lightweight, ad-free, with dark mode.
Runs Windows applications, individual apps, or full desktops inside Linux with native OS-level integration, sleek interface, advanced filesystem sharing, smartcard passthrough, and resource monitoring while supporting simple installation and ongoing feature updates.
QEMU, an open-source hypervisor, performs hardware virtualization, emulates CPUs using dynamic binary translation, and supports various architectures. It runs diverse unmodified guest OS, provides device models, and offers mixed translation modes for efficient execution.
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.
Comprehensive desktop tool for managing virtual machines using libvirt, supporting KVM, Xen, and Linux Containers. It offers performance stats, resource allocation and virtual hardware configuration with VNC and SPICE clients for graphical consoles.
UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU. In short, it allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
A simple GNOME application to access virtual systems. It is based on a design from Jon McCann and Jakub Steiner.
Portable-VirtualBox is a free and open source software tool that lets you run any operating system from a usb stick without separate installation. It unpacks and adjusts the paths and configuration of VirtualBox so it will run portably.
Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS, with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and containerd.
Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux, Windows and macOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and HyperKit on macOS to run the VM with minimal overhead.
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Open source but problems with 3D accelerations (works better in VMWare for me).