[Nottingham] Linux VM performance

[Jason Irwin]

On 18/05/16 11:30, Daryl via Nottingham wrote:
> Anyway. that wasn't the point of my email. I was setting up a VirtualBox
> VM to package all this up and so installed the latest Ubuntu (as I like
> to try new shiny stuff). Performance was really poor. Ubuntu has always
> been a bit graphics heavy and the acceleration isn't so good in
> VirtualBox it seems.
Can VBox do PCI pass-through? All my kit is too old to support it and I 
don't have a second GPU, so I've never needed to check.
You do need to enable 3D acceleration and install the Guest Additions 
from the host's .iso (DO NOT use the ones from the guest's package 
manager, too old).

I'm pretty sure KVM can do pass-through, but VirtManager doesn't have 
all the nice UI features or VBox.
(Other KVM clients might be available)

The latest VBox versions have a really nice GUI where you can organise 
groups of VMs and run them on a single click (headless/detachable too). 
A great CLI as well.

I'm genuinely surprised Oracle hasn't ruined it yet.

> It sounds like an interesting experiment. How productive is it possible
> to be using the terminal? In the modern world of HTML emails and
> web-everything
So long as the site doesn't rely heavily on graphics and JS, it works 
well. I know from when I've borked the discrete card on the latop and 
have to scout around finding out how to de-bork it.

Email should always be plain text. Always. Unfortunately reality and the 
whims of the great unwashed disagree. >:-(

> It might be an interesting experiment to undertake.
It certainly would be, especially if done in VM so that *IF* something 
critical demands graphics, you can jump on to the host.
Or try to use a TTY?

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