Karton: KDE’s Game-Changer for Effortless Virtual Machine Management

If you’re using GNOME, you might be familiar with GNOME Boxes for creating virtual machines easily. It’s often recommended for newcomers to Linux. But KDE users typically lean on tools like virt-manager or even GNOME Boxes, although these don’t always fit seamlessly within the Plasma desktop.

Currently, there’s exciting news for KDE users: a new Virtual Machine Manager named Karton is in development. This project began with Aaron Rainbolt’s effort to create a QEMU frontend, later taken over by KDE developer Harald Sitter as part of a Google Summer of Code project.

Now, Derek Lin, a student at the University of Waterloo and a participant in Google Summer of Code 2025, is actively working on Karton. His goal? To design a virtual machine manager that feels like a natural part of the KDE environment.

Karton will be built using Qt Quick and Kirigami, aimed at making the user interface intuitive and visually appealing. It will leverage the libvirt API to manage virtual machines, potentially allowing for multi-platform support.

Lin’s current focus is on essential features. He is replacing direct calls to virt-install with libosinfo to better handle OS images and configuration. Key development tasks include:

• Creating a custom SPICE viewer for interacting with virtual machines.
• Allowing snapshot capabilities to restore or back up previous states.
• Ensuring the UI is friendly and engaging, taking community feedback into account.

Here’s a quick overview of what Lin has proposed:

• Use libvirt’s XML format for virtual machine installation and configuration.
• Build a custom SPICE viewer.
• Implement virtual machine snapshots.
• Design an easy-to-use and attractive GUI.
• Create a browsing tool for common operating systems.
• Include GPU and memory usage graphs.

Development is on a timeline, with GSoC coding set to start on June 2, 2025. The team aims to have a working version ready for evaluation by July 14, 2025, and to wrap up everything by September 1, 2025.

This project comes at a time when virtualization is becoming increasingly relevant. As remote work and cloud solutions gain traction, efficient tools for managing virtual environments are crucial. Recent studies have shown that over 70% of employees prefer flexible work arrangements, further emphasizing the importance of user-friendly virtualization tools like Karton.

With Karton, KDE users can look forward to a solution that not only meets their needs but also enhances their overall experience within the Plasma desktop.

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