[Dodged!] Best way to host several Linux Mint 20.1 VMs? Which hypervisor?

[minotaur]

Recently, a laptop from a family member became free. Specs: Mobility Core i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD.

I have some experience with Hyper-V and have successfully run quite a number of Windows virtual machines using it. I've also been able to use Hyper-V to run some non-GUI Linux boxes (Debian) for some experimental Wordpress servers (non-production, very light duty).

I'm thinking that this laptop can be a platform that I can use to virtualize a few Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon VMs.

Each VM's purpose is for web surfing, running Google Chrome. I'd like to remote into each VM via RDP if I can from a Windows PC or another PC running Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon.

One option is to continue using Hyper-V on this laptop, but I'm not getting the impression that using Hyper-V to virtualize Linux Mint in full GUI-mode is a common occurrence.

Maybe it's better to use a Linux-based product since all I want to virtualize are Linux VMs. If so, what could be the best way to virtualize LM in a full GUI mode?

My limited experience with Linux VMs in Hyper-V involves just Debian Wordpress servers. They aren't really interacted with.

The goal of the LM VMs is so that each can be used for a different "persona" of mine. e.g. 1) work, 2) personal, 3) other. etc. And in these cases, each VM is going to interacted with a lot. i.e., the GUI needs to be smooth and responsive.

How would you virtualize 3 or 4 LM 20.1 VMs? (Note: I'm a Linux noob, feel free to expand at length ).

I've been reading about KVM and QEMU. Perhaps these 2 together would be good? Would they be better than Hyper-V?

[minotaur]

Just as a follow-up to myself, I'm currently going down the path of NOT using virtualization. i.e. I've "dodged" the issue.

I'm taking advantage of Linux's multi-user capability via different user accounts.

So I run LM natively on the laptop (i.e. no hypervisor). And then created 3 different users. When I switch users, whatever I had going is now brought to the foreground and I can work on it. Because it's differentiated by user, the Chrome logins to whatever sites I was interacting with are tied to each user and, importantly, separated from the others. Basically, by switching users, I am, in effect, changing to the different and specific "computer" associated with each user.

It works! And there's no overhead and complications with running a virtual infrastructure. Much more of the system's RAM is available for my use.

The cherry on top would be to be able to remote into each user.

I'm currently evaluating Nomachines Workstation. It works well.

At some point, I might want to try XRDP as it's free and I'm only one user. Nomachines Workstation is a full-fledged terminal server and is really slick but my purpose is just to be able to easily log in as different personas on the Internet and not to multitask several users at once.

Now I can freely interact with the Internet as any of: a) an internationally renowned cake-decorator, b) world-champion-level driver of radio-controlled cars, c) MI-6 operative based in Antwerp, manipulating the diamond market