Virtual machines.

[oshunluvr]

, that has to be the perfect wallpaper for win-10 in a VM on a linux host !

VINNY

Ding Ding Ding ! A winner!

[vinnywright]

, that has to be the perfect wallpaper for win-10 in a VM on a linux host !

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Just for fun, since I run windows 10 in a VM;

[Don B. Cilly]

Talking about network... this got me a bit curious:



On the left, network usage for Ubuntu 19.04 in the VM. On the right, for the host, Neon 18.04.
See, on the VM, it never goes to zero. It's always at least 200 Bps. Usually more.

Do you think it's because of Ubuntu, or the VM?
Probably Ubuntu though, I don't remember seeing this with other VM distros... but whichever it is... just what is it transmitting/ receiving all the time, I wonder

[oshunluvr]

I use VirtualBox daily with multiple VMs interacting with each other (part of my job). Currently it's mostly Windows 10 and Centos 6.7, but formerly Windows 7, XP and Centos 3.6 (?). All run rather well until I have more than 4 or 5 open at once. I have 4 cores enabled on the Centos VMs but only 1 on the Windows and they all have 2GB ram and max video memory. I run them on i7-6700 series machines with 32GB ram. I casually install various other distros for a look-see or some testing or file stealing, whatever.

Network and video usage seem to be the biggest bottlenecks, but they're all usable.

The primary benefit for my usage is when I trash a VM I just re-import it.

[oldgeek]

At first all my Qemu VM windows were automatically set to my old monitor--1028 X 768--so I reset them using system settings/display. Now the only time I get the smaller settings is when I use Wayland on Neon, which I cannot get to produce other than a 1028 X 768 image. So I stopped using Wayland.

[Don B. Cilly]

I've been having a hell of a time with Qemu.
On my 4-core 8G system - which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike up to VirtualBox - I tried Qemu.
Well, the problem seems to be graphics, all the rest runs almost, but not quite, entirely unlike fast enough... faster than VB anyway.

Thing is, resizing to window won't work, and if I try to power off the machine to try different settings, at reboot all I get - always - is this:



Which does not happen at first boot, only if I shut it down.

[oldgeek]

I have tried both Virtual Box and QEMU and have stuck with the latter. I have 16 GiB memory and a 7th gen i3 which supposedly has a clock speed of 3.9,. and I set my guest distros to 4 GiB memory and dual cores. Currently I have 3 distros installed on it: Manjaro (to see why it's so popular), Neon stable, and Kubuntu 19.10, which looks really good so far. I've tried Mint, but dumped it fairly quickly, as I have otgher distros on Distrowatch's tops list. I no longer need Windows for work because I?m retired and so got rid of it. The only Windows thing I run is Space Engine, whic I run using Wine and am waiting for the author to provide a Linux-based version for Steam. Virtual Engines are fun and allow one to check out a number of distros. I still always come back to Kubuntu, however.

[vinnywright]

and



running like an install , but still in "try me" stage , not installed yet .

the sound from the youtube vid is playing through the host speakers without me doing anything .

VINNY

[Don B. Cilly]

Exactly. A 5-year-old 4-core Celeron with 8G RAM is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike up to it.
Your specs are overkill.

Something just a little younger and with 16G of RAM and a half-decent video card would probably be just fine.

[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.

[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]

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]

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.

[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.