If your using Virt-Manager GUI to manage guests then it'll use VNC output by default. If your going through the command line then the default will be SDL window, but you can use switches to use VNC or run headless. This the a scenario you use when you're using KVM? SDL is when you open a window directly on your own desktop and don't have to go through rdekstop? Now Virtualbox has all the same capabilities, but it's a bit more flexible with the ability to resize the Windows window and such. But VNC allows you to close out your window without shutting down the machine. The advantage of using SDL over VNC output is that SDL is faster. Rdesktop is nice because it supports sound and is faster. So that is things like headless Serial Console (were you connect to COM1 on the guest machine), VNC, and SDL.ĭo the install using SDL, then switch so it's VNC output and then setup Windows to allow rdesktop to connect and use rdesktop for most things.

KVM supports all the outputs that Qemu supports. There is a GUI front-end for it from Redhat folks called Virt-manager that is designed to help manage a typical kvm server setup. The userland portion is a modified Qemu virtual machine. Reading around, even on the desktop KVM is running on, it looks like you can only get to the guest OS using rdesktop? Is this true?

Kvm vs virtualbox vs vmware performance