Virtualization

Prism is built to be a lab environment. Whether you need to test a new Linux distro, run Windows-only software, or isolate a development environment, the virtualization stack is pre-configured and ready to go.

Core stack

Prism uses KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and QEMU as the engine. To manage these visually, we provide Virt-Manager, a powerful GUI that handles everything from disk creation to network bridging.

Key features

The Prism virtualization module includes several "Quality of Life" features out of the box:

  • TPM Support (swtpm): Enables the Software Trusted Platform Module, which is a strict requirement for installing and running Windows 11.
  • SPICE Integration: Provides high-performance guest display, automatic resolution scaling, and shared clipboards between your Prism host and the virtual machine.
  • USB Redirection: Allows you to plug a physical USB device into your computer and "pass it through" directly into the VM.
  • VirtIO Drivers: Includes virtio-win and win-spice to ensure Windows guests run with the fastest possible disk and network speeds.

Automatic user access

One of Prism's unique touches is the Dynamic Group Injection. In standard NixOS, you have to manually add your user to the libvirtd group. Prism's module automatically detects all "Normal Users" in your configuration and grants them the necessary permissions to manage VMs without needing root access.

# This logic in virtualization.nix handles it for you:
users.users = lib.genAttrs vmUsers (name: {
  extraGroups = [ "libvirtd" "kvm" ];
});

How to start your first VM

  1. Launch Virt-Manager from your app launcher ($MOD + 0).
  2. The connection to qemu:///system should happen automatically.
  3. Click the "New Virtual Machine" icon.
  4. Follow the wizard to select your ISO and allocate CPU/RAM.
Performance Tip:

When creating a VM, always choose "VirtIO" for the Disk and Network settings. It is significantly faster than the "SATA" or "e1000" emulated defaults.

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