Why are virtual machines so difficult these days?

Question

I think I have used VMware Workstation since its first release and I still use it. At home and at work.Through the years I have one ESX( whatever they call the commercial version of it now) For work.I have used Fusion at work.I have also used a few of the alternative free ones.It used to be, take the iso boot the VM, go through the installation and things are great. It just worked. (Well not always)For the past year and a half at least, getting something running on VMware workstation, and QNAP, and unRaid at home.Get the ISO, pick the "Windows 10" profile. Boot, Nope, issues right away.Get the ISO, pick the Ubuntu profile that matches iso, boot, nope.(I think that is due to it requires a help with the hd).I find work arounds usually after tinkering with it.OpenBSD however installs without issue on all of them. Like I expect installations to go.The VM should not be that different from an installation on a physical machine. Why are there so many more problems now?Has anyone else noticed?

fuzzfactor · Accepted Answer

On real hardware the most basic BIOS setting should ideally work to install any operating system and vice versa.
Any specialty needs over and above that should only be enabled in BIOS for more unusual cases that fewer specialized users might need. The kind of things that you could never expect every single mainboard to support anyway, but if you need that option that's what you might be paying extra for.
This is what a virtual machine was originally intended to substitute for.
The default setting needs to just work for any OS of any vintage, or it's not much of a substitute for the real thing.
When things like VMware (and OS's and hardware) started to deviate from this path years ago, it looked like there was going to be not as much of a sensible outcome in the long run.

anthk · Answer

No. Thinkering with emulators by the age of 14 made me very capable to set up almost any virtualizer/emuator by just reading the documentation. From graphical ones to command line based ones, from Zinc to Qemu.

GianFabien · Answer

I stopped using VMware products 12+ years ago. I too found them ever more complicated to administer. I suspect that the problems stem from the many different implementations of virtualisation support in CPUs, with increased mitigations for HeartBleed and similar attacks. Perhaps some of your problems stem from Windows having ever more complex TPM, EFI etc requirements. Also possible that Intel management engine is causing interactions.With each new generation CPUs have become ever more complex. Some of those capabilities just cannot be accurately emulated.