elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Craig Weber <weberc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not claiming running it in a VM is ideal; however, it's often 
necessary (a lot of people want to try an OS before installing it on 
hardware; others don't want to commit to beta software). In short, 
hardware installation is simply out of the question for a lot of people.

If you'd like to write up an alternative virtualization solution, I'd 
be happy to link to it on my blog.

As a side note, running the VM in fullscreen mode means you don't have 
to hover over said 1px stripe to show the dock. And I don't believe 
I've had such graphics problems with other OSes in VirtualBox--while I 
don't doubt VirtualBox's drivers are crappy, it looks like some of the 
problem is on Luna's implementation (of course, this is perfectly 
acceptable as Virtualbox isn't a supported target).

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Sergey Shnatsel Davidoff 
<sergey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Unfortunately VirtualBox is not a great choice because of its really, 
> really poor GPU passthrough drivers that can cause all sorts of 
> random issues, including crashes: 
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk5Mw
>
> Running Luna in virtual machines is not a great idea in general 
> because it's just not designed for such use. For example, using the 
> dock in a VM is a PITA because you have to hover a 1px stripe, which 
> is tricky. Also VirtualBox has very slow 2D acceleration, so the dock 
> is slow to show up too even if you manage to reveal it.
> And any VM drivers are really slow at OpenGL, so Gala animations are 
> laggy, window management in general is laggy even if you disable 
> animations, and VirtualBox drivers show all kinds of nasty artifacts 
> too.
>
> So, if you don't mind unusable window management (e.g. you always use 
> one window), you can try running Luna in a VM, but please use 
> something other than VirtualBox. In fact, Parallels GPU drivers are 
> crap as well (proprietary and even worse than VirtualBox) and 
> QEMU/KVM doesn't have guest GPU drivers, so the only VM in which Luna 
> is usable (in single-window mode, because window management is b0rked 
> either way) is VMware.
>
> If you want usable window management, you can try running Luna in 
> fullscreen mode in QEMU/KVM or Xen with GPU passthrough to guest, but 
> that's tricky to set up and I can't see any advantages of this setup 
> over an actual installation.
>
> Oh, and there's also the option to hack out Gala and replace it with 
> something that does compositing in software. But in that case you're 
> not really running Luna.
>
>
> 2013/6/23 Craig Weber <weberc2@xxxxxxxxx>
> > I made a brief write up on using VirtualBox to virtualize Luna. My 
> > primary purpose is to increase exposure to Luna, particularly to 
> > those less-technical users; however, it could also be useful for 
> > those looking to create a clean development environment without fear 
> > of breaking their production environment.
> >
> > I wrote this up because I experienced a lot of issues with 
> > installing/configuring a Luna VM, and I want others to benefit from 
> > my experiences. Please feel free to read this/share it with anyone 
> > who may find it useful:
> >
> > http://craigmatthewweber.com/2013/06/23/running-elementaryos-in-virtualbox-under-ubuntu-13-04/
> >
> > --
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>
>
> --
> Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
> OS architect @ elementary