How to start a virtual machine on a Mac where I am not a root/admin?

Question

I want to have my own little unpolluted environment where I can test a project I am working on. The physical computer is a university Mac, and I don't want to interfere with its environment, so I thought a virtual machine is a clean way to work at this computer.

The problem is that I don't have admin account on this computer, and so I cannot perform any installations that alter the system-wide environment, such as VirtualBox, for instance.

Is there any way I can install some form of virtual machine manager and start a virtual machine on this Mac?

Answer 1

You could use QEMU, and better yet, the Q.app.

However, performance and reliability are way worse than with Virtual Box, Parallels or Fusion. It might work for your situation, though.