Very basic boot to VM
 

I'm looking to get a system running that configures the system for multiple virt clients. No unnecessary software, libraries etc. I would like it to boot with a graphical user interface with icons for the various virtual clients that are installed. I am considering either a Gentoo based or LFS based system. The system should support any Linux distro, BSD and unfortunately Windoze. Any suggestions as to how to start or if a similar project exist where I might locate it would be awesome.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

I don't really get your question. Are you asking for a bare meter hypervisor of sorts? Maybe a minimal distro that has some vm installed?

Yes that is pretty much what I'm looking for. Just a bare system that configures everything and allows all virts access to network, printers, monitors etc. My idea is that there would be nothing unnecessary installed on the host system. However, since computer unsavy users will use it, a graphical system to select the OS to load would be necessary. I'm most curious if such a project already exists that I could easily configure. If not what would be the fastest way to get started. Currently I run Calculate Linux on my laptop, Ubuntu on my wife's laptop, Sabayon on my workstation and my wife's desktop has a very infected windoze installation. I would begin setting up the infected PC to boot with options to select any of theses 4 OS's. With snapshot available if Windoze gets reinfected I could revert to a preinfected snapshot.

this "requirement" already involves quite a lot that is not basic.

if you want to run these in a virtual machine, only the virtual machine needs to support those.
that's kinda the whole point of using virtual machines.
i have only experience with virtualbox and i find it easy to use and reliable and versatile.


imho, that is a contradiction in itself.


well, first of all these have to work on the host OS, then you have to make them wotk on the guest OS, too.
all this is possible to configure with virtualbox.

=====================================

All in all, i'd recommend any distro that is suffciently stable and provides you with a recent version of virtualbox and a lightweight desktop.
for choice of a light desktop environment that still has desktop icons, i'd say LXDE. maybe Lubuntu. or Xubuntu, with XFCE.

if you really want to get your hands dirty, and frequent updates, there's nothing like archlinux.

Xen seems to match your requirement of a minimal hypervisor, though I don't know what kind of GUI (if any) it offers.

I've been reading this thread wondering whether to contribute or not since I'm not that familiar with the technology likely to be the best in this case. However, I wit the answers here (no offence to precious posters) I wonder whether this ought to be moved to the virtualisation forum (by the original poster reporting it to the moderators)?
Personally if I were to try what is being asked I would install a minimal "server" install of Debian, then something like Fluxbox, then KVM and look at front-ends for it. I haven't played with KVM though so I'm afraid my virtualisation experience is mainly with VirtualBox and, while I like it, it's not particularly light and would likely drag in a lot of libraries.

op asked specifically for desktop icons, user-friendliness for non-savvy users, and (ootb?) support for printing etc.

The OP asked for a minimal install with icons on the desktop for running each VM. With a little tweaking that can be had under Fluxbox. Printing support and the like would, from my understanding, have to be down to each VM instance as they are the OSs that the users are using.
It was my understanding that the OP wants an absolute bare minimum installed in the host OS as it's just a springboard to get to the OSs which will actually be used.
Otherwise the OP is basically wanting Linux Mint Cinnamon or MATE with a VirtualBox install and there is no question here to be answered.

accroding to me Vmware workstation is best.i am run windows and fedora and Slackware as guest OS's in vmware workstation these three are works well.some guest OS need to install drivers some may not.