4 ms·

Anyone who uses a type 1 hypervisor as a daily driver on laptop?

I have Manjaro GNU/Linux installed on my laptop and it's serving me great. However, I find myself firing up a lot of virtual machines on VirtualBox (Kali for CTF's, Windows for experiments, Minikube for k8s, and more). I wonder if it is a good idea for me to install a type 1 hypervisor on my machine in this case. Do you have any stories to share?

ahepp 5y ago
I use hyper-v on my work laptop, and SSH in to a debian VM to access my dev environment. At home, I run Linux on my laptop and use KVM/libvirt for the kind of stuff you're discussing (when docker won't do, that is). I recommend it.
fsflover 5y ago
Yes, using Qubes OS as a daily driver, and can't recommend it enough: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org.
- khaled_ismaeel 5y ago
  Do you use it for security reasons or just convenience?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Here are my reasons: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15.
- robcohen 5y ago
  +1 QubesOS is awesome. Strongly Recommended. Looking forward to what SpectrumOS can bring.
- atatatat 5y ago
  What are the worst pain points? Checking to see if it meets my needs, yet.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/major-ux-pain-points/2487 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/major-ux-pain-points/2487
technofiend 5y ago
I tried virtual desktop for a bit with a DL360 Gen 9 using ESXi and an Intel NUC. Not exactly a laptop I know, but the NUC is essentially a laptop in a cube. The NUC worked perfectly. I ended up switching back to Fedora because the cost of the VMware license wasn't worth it on an old Skylake NUC which is no longer supported. I'd do it again on modern hardware. For the DL360 and an Nvidia 1660ti the only caveat was that Nvidia's driver stack wouldn't enable CUDA in VMs even after applying various workarounds. If I had to do it again I'd buy an AMD video card and a Dell server. AMD doesn't fight the user about fully enabling consumer video card features when passed through to virtual machines and Dell releases the latest driver and BIOS updates for free rather than hiding them behind a maintenance paywall like HPE and updates are crucial to stay abreast of CVEs. With supply chain issues and chip shortages video cards are so expensive and hard to get the idea of sharing one device between VMs as needed vs building multiple PCs or even multibooting is quite appealing. Beyond that you have enterprise-class equipment available cheap in the secondary markets so you can host your VMs on ECC memory, raided storage and talk to your network at 10 or 40 gigabits. I realize this is a bit far afield of your original ask but ESXi on laptop-class hardware like the NUC works great. Finally if you do decide to use VMware on consumer or prosumer hardware I highly recommend William Lam's blog: https://williamlam.com/ https://williamlam.com/
blockarchitech 5y ago
I have a desktop PC, and I have 2 SSD's in my laptop, and I used to dual boot ESXi and windows. Worked perfectly fine, just remotes into ESXi on my desktop at home. Now I dual boot Manjaro and a small windows partition, and just use qemu for most of my basic VMS.

ahepp 5y ago

I use hyper-v on my work laptop, and SSH in to a debian VM to access my dev environment. At home, I run Linux on my laptop and use KVM/libvirt for the kind of stuff you're discussing (when docker won't do, that is). I recommend it.

fsflover 5y ago

Yes, using Qubes OS as a daily driver, and can't recommend it enough: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org.

khaled_ismaeel 5y ago
Do you use it for security reasons or just convenience?
- fsflover 5y ago
  Here are my reasons: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15.
robcohen 5y ago
+1 QubesOS is awesome. Strongly Recommended. Looking forward to what SpectrumOS can bring.
atatatat 5y ago
What are the worst pain points? Checking to see if it meets my needs, yet.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/major-ux-pain-points/2487 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/major-ux-pain-points/2487

technofiend 5y ago

I tried virtual desktop for a bit with a DL360 Gen 9 using ESXi and an Intel NUC. Not exactly a laptop I know, but the NUC is essentially a laptop in a cube. The NUC worked perfectly. I ended up switching back to Fedora because the cost of the VMware license wasn't worth it on an old Skylake NUC which is no longer supported. I'd do it again on modern hardware. For the DL360 and an Nvidia 1660ti the only caveat was that Nvidia's driver stack wouldn't enable CUDA in VMs even after applying various workarounds. If I had to do it again I'd buy an AMD video card and a Dell server. AMD doesn't fight the user about fully enabling consumer video card features when passed through to virtual machines and Dell releases the latest driver and BIOS updates for free rather than hiding them behind a maintenance paywall like HPE and updates are crucial to stay abreast of CVEs. With supply chain issues and chip shortages video cards are so expensive and hard to get the idea of sharing one device between VMs as needed vs building multiple PCs or even multibooting is quite appealing. Beyond that you have enterprise-class equipment available cheap in the secondary markets so you can host your VMs on ECC memory, raided storage and talk to your network at 10 or 40 gigabits. I realize this is a bit far afield of your original ask but ESXi on laptop-class hardware like the NUC works great. Finally if you do decide to use VMware on consumer or prosumer hardware I highly recommend William Lam's blog: https://williamlam.com/ https://williamlam.com/

blockarchitech 5y ago

I have a desktop PC, and I have 2 SSD's in my laptop, and I used to dual boot ESXi and windows. Worked perfectly fine, just remotes into ESXi on my desktop at home. Now I dual boot Manjaro and a small windows partition, and just use qemu for most of my basic VMS.