Half of these exist because I was bored once.
The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.
I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don’t like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.
The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github’s CI doesn’t support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I’m doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).
If I could get vbox to work* on my laptop or find the drive to learn QEMU, then I would have plenty on there. For now I’m just stuck with plenty on my desktop running win10.
*I have installed it a few times on my Debian based distro, but I swear every time I do nothing to it and it destroys itself. Works fine one day, then the next I turn on my laptop, after the only changes being that I created and ran a VM and it decided to hate me and not even boot the program. I think I’m just cursed.
What about Virt Manager GUI, which is what I use here? It’s a frontend for QEMU and it’s not that difficult, honestly.
For windows I either use a mingw toolchain from mxe.cc or just run the msvc compiler in wine, works great for standard C and C++ at least, even when you use Qt or other third party libraries.
Interesting enough, there is a project that I’ve found that runs Windows in a Docker container as a VM.
https://github.com/dockur/windows
I run a Windows 10 LTSC that way to run things like Blue Iris for my security cameras, and some stuff to track my solar installation.
Is this like opening tons of browser tabs?
With that many Windows (gasp) ones, no… I’m afraid you are not
There are many many many insane people who are running no virtual machines at all.
*some
*sane
Mutahar please log in to your main account
Hey I get this reference.
It’s only insane if you have them all running at once.
I have about twice this many VMs and about this many running at any given time.
I use Qubes btw
What do you use it for? How’s the daily-driver experience?
Its my only computer. I couldn’t go back to anything else. Every time I double click Firefox, it opens a new VM. When I close Firefox, the VM is destroyed.
Email is in a separate VM. Email attachments also open in a disposable VM. USB devices are quarantined unless I connect them to a specific VM. Its a game changer.
Cons: I need as much ram as I used to need when I ran Windows. Watching videos is a bit choppy at full screen sometimes. And I can’t play any video games.
Fwiw I had to tinker a bit to get good video playback, Fedora was always choppy for me for some reason but debian is typically smooth with hw accel disabled.
As for the gaming, depending on your setup (I have a desktop and T480 I keep in sync) you can absolutely run two video cards and do PCI passthrough on one to a gaming VM. I have mine set up with a dedicated NIC and USB card and just use a KVM to swap between Qubes and Windows (for now) and it’s worked really well. Had to play around a ton to get the full speed out of the GPU though and it only seemed to work in windows so hopefully get that going for a Linux hvm one day.
Absolutely agree there is no going back, I have all of my work stuff entirely hardware agnostic and a full on replica of my work desktop ready to go in a moment should the desktop die. Apart from that keeping client work isolated has been such a game changer.
I use Debian. Like I said, video is only sometimes choppy. I usually have a few vlc windows open at one time. Something I’ve learned is that it will use a lot of CPU even if the video is paused. To stop it, I have to manually set the video source to “none” when I pause a video and leave it in the BG.
Or just pause the whole VM. Another great Qubes feature
Something I’ve learned is that it will use a lot of CPU even if the video is paused.
this has been my experience with it on windows too, so it must be a core VLC thing. if it bothers you, I recommend you to try out MPV. been using it for more than a year, would never go back. If you need more than the on screen controller and key combos, there are quite a few proper GUI players being built on MPV.
Sounds like some pretty serious cons
Out of curiosity why do you like qubes? Having everything in a VM doesn’t sound that great to me
I get that the main concern of it is security but what do you do that it demands that level of hardening? I’ve only ever got one virus in my life that I know of as it is and that was on windows
Lol wut? Those pros far outweigh the cons. But I guess I don’t care about video games?
I have money on my computer, and I have a company that has customer info. That’s enough of a reason for me to want to protect my shit better than running one big, super-vulnerable system
Not op but I do a lot of architecture and infrastructure work on top of my normal dev work so keeping everything separated and per-client has become a pretty important advantage for me personally
Yeah I also consult with many different clients. Sometimes those clients need me to install sketch software. Thank god I can do this in a silo in Qubes, or it could endanger my other clients.
I guess you should use proxmox at this point 🤣
Honestly they really should
I mean is there any really reason though, they both run on the same subsystem and they aren’t doing anything crazy
linux users are sane?
Users are sane?
Have you automated creation?
Yes, but usually they’d have a more robust VM management system to stay sane for long.
Hell to update them regularly 👀
Nah, most of the windows ones don’t get updates any more and the Linux ones can get a script that updates on boot. Takes longer to start up but handles the job itself.
