4 ms·

I never (all right, not never, but at least in the last five years) understood dualboot. Why not just run one OS as a master and then a VM in it?

by rplnt 11y ago

vetinari 11y ago
Hardware access and performance. It is only recently that the performance got OK-ish (through probably it is still not, if you feel that you have to get i7 6700K) and virtualizations started supporting PCI-Passthrough. The setup is still not simple, your common dual-booter will not be able to setup it right, yet.
- johncolanduoni 11y ago
  > virtualizations started supporting PCI-Passthrough To get a graphics card actually capable of this, you either need to buy the commercial grade versions (Quadro and FirePro) with are much more expensive, or buy a specific card for this purpose and deal with tons of issues[1] like not being able to restart the guest without crashing the host. [1]: http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough_Tested_Adapters#ATI.2FAMD_display_adapters http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough_Tested_A...
  - vetinari 11y ago
    ATI consumer cards do support PCI-Passthrough, it's Nvidia that you need Quadro. But the setup is not a simple one of neither.
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  - blibble 11y ago
    the vga arbiter stuff went away with UEFI based cards (about 2 years ago), consumer level cards now work without issue. NVIDIA attempt to detect the VM and artificially disable the driver, but works perfectly if you tell KVM to hide the fact it's a VM (requires a flag to be set in the config). the technical difficulty of pci passthrough consists of clicking "add pci device", then selecting your graphics card from the list.
- mirimir 11y ago
  If privacy is crucial, it's better to run Linux hosts and Windows VMs. But that doesn't work so well for high-end graphics, whether games or CAD. Or when even the fastest CPUs are too slow. So then you run Linux VMs in a Windows host. In my experience, VMware is a better choice on Windows hosts. But it's been a few years, and maybe VirtualBox is doing better on Windows.
  - vetinari 11y ago
    That's why I mentioned PCI-Passthrough. Then the guest can directly drive the graphics card, with it's native drivers.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      But you and johncolanduoni both say that it's nontrivial. However, blibble says that it's easy with current ATI consumer hardware. I know a few gamers who would like to relegate Windows to a locked-down VM ;)
      - vetinari 11y ago
        Well, it was a while that I was looking at it. Combine that with my opinions about gamers' hardware and system software knowledge (not very flattering, outside of knowing which brands and models are "best"), that's how I came to the conclusion, that it might be difficult for them. But do not take that as discouragement, your friends definitely should try it on their own.
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I never (all right, not never, but at least in the last five years) understood dualboot. Why not just run one OS as a master and then a VM in it?

by rplnt 11y ago

I never (all right, not never, but at least in the last five years) understood dualboot. Why not just run one OS as a master and then a VM in it?

vetinari 11y ago

Hardware access and performance. It is only recently that the performance got OK-ish (through probably it is still not, if you feel that you have to get i7 6700K) and virtualizations started supporting PCI-Passthrough. The setup is still not simple, your common dual-booter will not be able to setup it right, yet.

johncolanduoni 11y ago
> virtualizations started supporting PCI-Passthrough To get a graphics card actually capable of this, you either need to buy the commercial grade versions (Quadro and FirePro) with are much more expensive, or buy a specific card for this purpose and deal with tons of issues[1] like not being able to restart the guest without crashing the host. [1]: http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough_Tested_Adapters#ATI.2FAMD_display_adapters http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough_Tested_A...
- vetinari 11y ago
  ATI consumer cards do support PCI-Passthrough, it's Nvidia that you need Quadro. But the setup is not a simple one of neither.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- blibble 11y ago
  the vga arbiter stuff went away with UEFI based cards (about 2 years ago), consumer level cards now work without issue. NVIDIA attempt to detect the VM and artificially disable the driver, but works perfectly if you tell KVM to hide the fact it's a VM (requires a flag to be set in the config). the technical difficulty of pci passthrough consists of clicking "add pci device", then selecting your graphics card from the list.
mirimir 11y ago
If privacy is crucial, it's better to run Linux hosts and Windows VMs. But that doesn't work so well for high-end graphics, whether games or CAD. Or when even the fastest CPUs are too slow. So then you run Linux VMs in a Windows host. In my experience, VMware is a better choice on Windows hosts. But it's been a few years, and maybe VirtualBox is doing better on Windows.
- vetinari 11y ago
  That's why I mentioned PCI-Passthrough. Then the guest can directly drive the graphics card, with it's native drivers.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    But you and johncolanduoni both say that it's nontrivial. However, blibble says that it's easy with current ATI consumer hardware. I know a few gamers who would like to relegate Windows to a locked-down VM ;)
    - vetinari 11y ago
      Well, it was a while that I was looking at it. Combine that with my opinions about gamers' hardware and system software knowledge (not very flattering, outside of knowing which brands and models are "best"), that's how I came to the conclusion, that it might be difficult for them. But do not take that as discouragement, your friends definitely should try it on their own.

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