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What's a good way to have Linux VM with graphics acceleration on Windows host? WSL doesn't cut it and VirtualBox has really broken graphics support.

by shmerl 11mo ago

tuetuopay 11mo ago
I’ve found VMware to work well, though it’s degrading quickly. X11 is sorta broken, and not all Wayland compositors run. As an example, I can run KiCAD just fine under X11 with the modesetting driver, including the 3D board view.
- shmerl 11mo ago
  I need something that can run KDE Wayland session properly, including clipboard sync. VirtualBox has a broken clipboard (supposedly they plan to fix it), and it's only software rendering. How does VMware implement OpenGL and Vulkan acceleration in the VM?
  - tuetuopay 11mo ago
    My guess would be something akin to VirGL where they forward opengl/vulkan commands to the host. I've never dug into the nitty gritty, but VMware workstation is recognized as a GPU accelerated app, and exposes a virtual GPU in the VM. On the linux side, the vmwgfx kernel driver and DRM drivers are used. For X11 you use modesetting, and for Wayland whatever it auto-selects. I don't use KDE but I can confirm Debian's Gnome works out-of-the-box with the default Wayland backend (to be fair, the only other compositor I tried was Sway, which is known for being picky about the GPU used). Copy/paste works properly, as do general acceleration. I use those VMs daily, fullscreen on a 1440p monitor, so acceleration is not optional :)
    - shmerl 11mo ago
      Nice, I'll look into it, thanks!
okanat 11mo ago
WSL supports a kernel-based DirectX to Mesa bridge. It is better than any other VM implementation. However the latest releases caused some problems with auto detection mechanism in Mesa. Sometimes the Linux kernel module also fails to load. You need to ensure that DirectX driver is used with tools like eglinfo. Most of the time, the main culprit is LLVMpipe software driver being used due to wrong detection.
- shmerl 11mo ago
  You can't run a proper VM there though, something like a normal distro with systemd, KDE Wayland session and etc. At least from what I've figured out so far. Basically I need a normal full featured VM, not some gimped variant and with graphics acceleration preferably.

What's a good way to have Linux VM with graphics acceleration on Windows host? WSL doesn't cut it and VirtualBox has really broken graphics support.

by shmerl 11mo ago

What's a good way to have Linux VM with graphics acceleration on Windows host? WSL doesn't cut it and VirtualBox has really broken graphics support.

tuetuopay 11mo ago

I’ve found VMware to work well, though it’s degrading quickly. X11 is sorta broken, and not all Wayland compositors run. As an example, I can run KiCAD just fine under X11 with the modesetting driver, including the 3D board view.

shmerl 11mo ago
I need something that can run KDE Wayland session properly, including clipboard sync. VirtualBox has a broken clipboard (supposedly they plan to fix it), and it's only software rendering. How does VMware implement OpenGL and Vulkan acceleration in the VM?
- tuetuopay 11mo ago
  My guess would be something akin to VirGL where they forward opengl/vulkan commands to the host. I've never dug into the nitty gritty, but VMware workstation is recognized as a GPU accelerated app, and exposes a virtual GPU in the VM. On the linux side, the vmwgfx kernel driver and DRM drivers are used. For X11 you use modesetting, and for Wayland whatever it auto-selects. I don't use KDE but I can confirm Debian's Gnome works out-of-the-box with the default Wayland backend (to be fair, the only other compositor I tried was Sway, which is known for being picky about the GPU used). Copy/paste works properly, as do general acceleration. I use those VMs daily, fullscreen on a 1440p monitor, so acceleration is not optional :)
  - shmerl 11mo ago
    Nice, I'll look into it, thanks!

okanat 11mo ago

WSL supports a kernel-based DirectX to Mesa bridge. It is better than any other VM implementation. However the latest releases caused some problems with auto detection mechanism in Mesa. Sometimes the Linux kernel module also fails to load. You need to ensure that DirectX driver is used with tools like eglinfo. Most of the time, the main culprit is LLVMpipe software driver being used due to wrong detection.

shmerl 11mo ago
You can't run a proper VM there though, something like a normal distro with systemd, KDE Wayland session and etc. At least from what I've figured out so far. Basically I need a normal full featured VM, not some gimped variant and with graphics acceleration preferably.