Virtual machines.

[Don B. Cilly]

Continuing from here.

I used to have a Windows 7 VM. One of those free legal things you can get from Microsoft themselves and expire in 90 days - except they don't
(I don't have it anymore because I found ways to run the things I was running without Windows).
If I allocated 4G of RAM to it, it ran almost decently... except when it was off on a tangent doing hidden things by itself, which was like 70% of the time.
Then you basically couldn't do anything in it, and it went on for ages. CPU at 100%. But that's Windows.
In the rare intervals of less-than-100% CPUsage, I could use it to, basically, play poker . Which uses close to 0% CPU on Linux. And on Windows, I guess, but it's hard to tell, it's over 50% when idle...

I also use Virtualbox to test Linux distros.
Thing is, they run slow.
They run a lot better - on my system - on the USB stick than in the VM. And I always allocate 4G to the VMs, even though Virtualbox by default allocates far less.

I actually have an almost-full-blown Neon -on-a-stick - with a persistence file - which I use (very seldom) for... it's complicated
So I was wondering why VMs seem to run more slowly here than USB sticks...

It's a Quad core Intel Celeron J1900 min/max 1351/2415 MHz, 8G RAM, 500G SSD, Neon unstable.

[Snowhog]

My Oracle VirtualBox VMs of Kubuntu and KDE neon run extremely well. They aren't slow by any means. In the setup for the virtual CPU, I designate at least 2 cores (my host OS has 4 cores). IF I designate just one core, then anomalous behavior is sometimes experienced. As you have 4 cores in the Host CPU, and if you have not, increase the number of virtual CPU cores.

[Don B. Cilly]

Aha. I totally missed the core-assignation thing.
I'll try that with the next one I set up (I don't have any at the moment). Thanks.

Still, VB by default assigns a number of cores to the guest that would probably cause anomalous behaviour... how clever
But then, by default it assigns a ridiculous amount of memory which will certainly cause a horrible behaviour...

[claydoh]

Also , if you haven't, install the Guest Additions, which gives a better virtual video driver, which might help as Plasma does utilize the gpu a fair bit.

While the j1900 is fine, it is fairly low end, and I wonder if it has the built-in VT or VT-x extensions that help with virtualization ......and it look like it does, so it may be worth checking the bios to see if it is an option that is disabled by default. I think I have had to turn that option on in a number of my recent systems, but not all. It is an option in Virtualbox that may need to be enabled as well. dea if it really helps or not, though, It feels like it does to me.

[Don B. Cilly]

I have the Guest Additions.

I can't find anything VT-related in the BIOS... and the simple string "vt" is not in the motherboard PDF manual :·/ ... belay that, it's "Intel Virtualization Technology".
I'll check next reboot. Thanks.

[vinnywright]

, I just got ,re-interested in VM's due to another thread around hear recently .

I have only played VM once or twice this time (ya like it's a game , ) this time but what I did was to install Virtualbox-6 on one of my systems (Kubuntu-18.04 on a a disk with btrfs ) and Virt-manager with QEMU-KVM on the Neon-testing install.

I have a 4 core hyper threaded CPU so the system sees 8 cpu's , when I set up the VM's I gave them 4 cores and 4 GB RAM (both systems the same , so kinda testing to see if one works better than the other) and installed neon user in both .

I wiped an install in one of the partitions (EXT4) on the 500GB drive and have the VM's disks kept their .

from the initial test (installing and updating) they both worked quite well and in "full screen" you couldn't tell it was a VM , both Vbox and Virt-manager would allow seamless mouse movement between the guest and the host and whatever one was clicked in last had the keyboard.

both would give me the guest in native resolution (1920x1080) in full screen(or not) but I had to change the display adapter in one (tisk tisk I cant remember which now)

the Vbox will let the guest see a usb plugged into the host but it had to be plugged in before starting the machine and then added to the machine , Virt-manager would let me add it to the running machine.

I made the QEMU vdisk first with hopes of using the 1 image but Vbox did not see it as a disk/drive , so I gave it it's own.

O and they both had network through the host (wifi)

well that's all the further I made it so far

VINNY

[vinnywright]

I have the Guest Additions.

I can't find anything VT-related in the BIOS... and the simple string "vt" is not in the motherboard PDF manual :·/ ... belay that, it's "Intel Virtualization Technology".
I'll check next reboot. Thanks.

try this

 cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep vmx

and see if it reports back anything , if "vmx" is their your CPU supports Virtualization .

VINNY

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes, the CPU has the flag.
dmidecode confirms:
Flags:
...
VME (Virtual mode extension)

And it is enabled in the BIOS.
So it's probably just VB allocating just one core. I'll try allocating more.
Any distro you could recommend checking out?
I already have Kubuntu 18.04, 14.04 and 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, Arch (Rawhide) with KDE and of course Neon Unstable, which I use daily... on HD. No VMs at the moment.

[claydoh]

All of them

[WWDERW]

Any distro you could recommend checking out?

If wanting to stick within the KDE landscape (which I like to do as much as I can, only going into Cinnamon if necessary), may want to have a look at OpenSuse, maybe Tumbleweed since you don't have a problem with having Arch on a system.

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes, I'm familiar with Distrowatch.
It's sort of almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... there's just too many

If wanting to stick within the KDE landscape ...

...which I like to do as much as I can too.
I was reasonably happy with Gnome, then Unity came out, I switched to Kubuntu out of desperation, and I've been quite addicted ever since.
It's like driving a Citroën DS (which I do). You get used to that... anything else is like...

I've tried OpenSuse, SolydK, and... Mint basically.
Not very appealing . To me.
I can't try Manjaro because I'm Italian

...since you don't have a problem with having Arch on a system.

Well, I don't have a problem with having it there. I use it every now and then if I want a bit of...
It's like playing a game. Get to the next level, then spend a few hours banging your head against the next one, and so on.
Like an old-style adventure game. Monkey-Island style, once you've installed a DE. Text-based before that.

What I have a problem with is... their slogan: Keep It Simple.
Nothing is more complicated than Arch. Any task that on any other distro I've tried takes ten seconds, on Arch takes at least an hour.

[Don B. Cilly]

Hmm.
Out of curiosity I set up a VM for Tails.
It's quite funny actually. Something you should only use wearing sunglasses, an old Macintosh and a floppy hat.

Still, it's quite sleek and simple. It uses a sort of simplified Gnome.



As you can see, I allocated 4G of RAM and 2 cores to it.
VB by default wanted to allocate 512M of RAM (!) and only one core.
Well... it's still slow.
Firefox (with Tor, obviously takes some 40 seconds to open.
And everything else is... a bit like moving underwater.
I'll try and burn it on a stick and see how it behaves.

[WWDERW]

You know, everyone keeps on mentioning cores. All of mine are still 1 core.

What I don't see mentioned is video ram (mine is at 256MB after enabling 3D acceleration).

Settings for the 64bit Windows VM that I have that I edit HD video in is

16GB of RAM (ECC ram)
256MB of Video RAM
3D Acceleration
1 Core

The only thing that may change from one guest VM to the next is the RAM allocation.

All of mine run smooth as glass, even the VM within a VM and that second VM doesn't have any hardware acceleration to help it out.

[Don B. Cilly]

I increased the video RAM from the 16MB allocated by VB by default to 64MB, and enabled hardware acceleration (it wasn't).
No noticeable improvement.

I set it up on a USB stick.
Noticeable improvement.

Obviously, the advantages of the VM are, you can save the state, don't have to boot from USB, etc.
So for casual use, it's fine. If I had to use the OS a little more intensively, though, I would dual-boot it, or even use it on-a-stick.

Thing is, probably, my machine isn't quite up to it.
My BIOS date (as per dmidecode) is 07/07=2014. And it was a relatively old motherboard even then.
(btw, dmidecode>dmidecode.txt is not a bad thing to have
I only have 8G of Ram.

On a slightly more modern machine, I'm sure it would be OK.
Mine doesn't quite cut it.

[WWDERW]

I think this:

Obviously, the advantages of the VM are, you can save the state, don't have to boot from USB, etc.
So for casual use, it's fine. If I had to use the OS a little more intensively, though, I would dual-boot it, or even use it on-a-stick.

Is due to this:

Thing is, probably, my machine isn't quite up to it.

The resources of the machine do have a big impact on how one's experience is to be.

I'm able to edit HD video (as well as other content creation type of work) as if it was installed on bare metal. This is using even Windows and Adobe products, where aren't the lightest on resources that you can get.

For those that have dual video cards and are able to pass one to the Guest VM, I think are even able to play video games within a VM.

What I'll see/hear of a lot in my profession is that people will try to run Parallels on a Mac (quite of few Airs) booting Windows with only 8GBs of ram and they complain about the Windows VM performance. What they don't realize is that a 64 bit Win install requires 2GB minimum (and it's not like in the Vista and 7 days when can do a few tricks here or there to bring that requirement down) and their program (which was 32bit at the time) requires 2GB of ram on it's own. That's their 4 GB right there. And that's bare minimum to run Windows and their program.