I appear to have issues with GNOME boxes.
AN iso of Zorin OS doesn’t resize to full screen.
Ubuntu iso doesn’t install properly. It goes through the installation process but then reverts back to the ‘try Ubuntu’ stage.
no idea about that - can’t you adapt the (virtual) screen resolution?
(match the screen resolution inside the virtualized OS to your actual screen resolution if it isn’t auto detected - for me, in VirtManager, it never is auto detected - it is just some low resolution default)
I haven’t used Gnome Boxes for a long time - and rarely ever back then.
I opted to use VirtManager instead - for more control.
It is essentially the same, but exposes more options more easily.
Perhaps just shut it down after installation - and remove the ISO, so that it can’t boot off of it and get in the loop again.
But I don’t know how to do it with Gnome Boxes - can’t describe it.
… just as with a normal, real hardware system:
remove the installation medium before you reboot
or the machine will again boot off of it - effectively going in circles
I use Boxes every day and rarely have issues.
What does that mean? Did you try changing the resolution?
You forgot to “eject” the ISO after installing as @Nachlese mentioned above. 
Boxes uses libvirt as well.
I know. I mentioned it above. kinda …
Yes, I was just attempting to be more specific. I didn’t mean to step on your toes, so to speak. Apologies.
More info: Boxes and virt-manager are both libvirt clients. For additional functionality, check the optional dependencies for libvirt such as QEMU support.
You might also try installing spice-vdagent in the guest os and see if that helps.
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Do you know how to do that?
How do I setup Virt Manager.
Tried downloading it and when I try to start a new machine: no connection to start on.
as almost always:
the Arch Wiki ← that is a link 
There might be a dedicated Manjaro Wiki here on the forum on the subject
but I don’t know that.
literally:
just install that package - inside the VM
package names might be different
Some Linux OS’s will detect when they are installed into a VM and will install that by default.
Some might not - then you use the virtualized OS (it’s package manager) to do that.
I have only ever used Debian, Ubuntu, Mint as for .deb based distros
and Arch proper, Antergos (long defunct) and EOS and, of course, Manjaro on the Arch side of things.
I know of Suse and Fedora and RedHat, but I have never really used them.
Zorin is apparently based upon Ubuntu.
I have never tried it, nor did I want to.
I always like to stick as close to the origin as I can.
(which would be Ubuntu, in that case - and Debian, by extension)
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How do I ‘eject’ the ISO? It is a downloaded file
None of those is supported by Manjaro forum.
That said - usually it is because you have not installed the necessary tools in the virtual machine.
How you get the relevant tools into the virtual machine is different from distribution to distribution.
Manjaro ISO uses Manjaro Hardware Detection to install the correct tools.
It is treated as if it where inserted into a (virtual) CD-Rom drive
and can be (virtually) ejected from it …
It is a virtual machine …
Probably:
the hamburger menu top right → settings → the Devices and Shares tab in the middle
the iso will be listed and can be removed
… the same way you install anything else in that particular distro - use it’s package manager
If it isn’t already installed …
how to install it totally and entirely depends on the OS - on the Linux distribution that is … installed there.
Arch and similar distros use pacman
Zorin, Ubuntu, Debian use apt (or dpkg)
but Zorin may even have it’s own package manager - I just don’t know.
RedHat, Fedora … are .rpm based - and might even use different package managers
Suse is another that uses the .rpm format
I know nothing about these - as I have never used them in recent years.
… install the package which provides that functionality
find out yourself how it is named in each one of these distros
… it’s quite easy - for each one there is plenty of info available on the interwebs
I have just installed gnome-boxes
and it occurred to me that it may be a viable alternative to virt-manager
It looks like everything I need and have ever done could just as well be done with boxes.
It’s just a different UI, essentially.
I share (virtual) disks between several VM’s
all of the Manjaro flavours and even EOS share one virtual disk as a pacman cache
not sure how well or easy that would be with boxes.
I just never tried - and virt-manager works, for me.
it’s not the worst thing in the world (having the screen not automatically resized)
you can always do that yourself - from within the system running in the VM
just adapt the screen resolution to what is not auto detected, but to what your screen actually is, by hand
I actually haven’t used Gnome Boxes, but I’ve used over 5 other virtualiztion technologies. And it looks like it uses the same video emulation as Qemu: VGA, QXL, SPICE, etc… And they both use libvirt which makes them configured very similarly.
When I have video woes, I always start by getting VGA working. It’s simple, sometimes the best performing, but you are limited in the resolutions you can pick. But that’s has always been the easiest method to get working first for me.
QXL can be on par with VGA, but you can do a little more, and higher resolutions.
SPICE does the most. But at least for me, is the slowest of them all. But the features it provides, may be worth more to you than performance. Dynamically changing your desktop size when you change the window size of the guest window, shared clipboard with the host, are some of the features of SPICE.
Yet again, I can’t speak for Zorin OS, but distros usually have something like XXX-guest-tools (guest-agent?) as a package. With SPICE often being an optional dependency. Manjaro and many others detect that it is in a guest, and install these tools (and modules) for you.
A quick search sees spice-guest-tools as a package for Zorin, but like I said… Start simpler first with VGA and QXL over SPICE, when running into video problems.
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