3D support for X11 guests (opens in new tab)

(virtualbox.org)

99 pointseshizhan8y ago73 comments

73 comments

Virtualbox 3D progress has been unfortunately slow for a long time. It was kind of anticipated with Oracle's acquisition, as their laser focus on legal engagements and consulting pushes a lot of technical projects to the back burner.

I'd love to see a bit more alignment between VirtualBox and Qemu. Even though KVM and Qemu's virtualized graphics acceleration is still a WIP, having a shared code base could accelerate the project on things like SPICE (https://www.spice-space.org/download.html) and Virgl (https://virgil3d.github.io/). Unfortunately, I think it uses a lot of Linux-specific technologies (e.g. KVM, Gallium), so the likelihood of sharing at that level seems pretty low. Although, supposedly Gallium isn't locked into Windows.

Theoretically, if we could agree on a common host-guest interface for a virtual graphics adapter, it could share the guest implementations and host implementations could be added as needed. And it could be reused in multiple projects. But it always seems that this is the tech that never gets sufficient cross-project collaboration. And given the many differences between vendor hardware, a portable interface has been difficult. Maybe Vulkan will provide enough low-level functionality to ease the abstraction?

hedora8y ago

Without 3d support, basically no-one can use virtualbox, so is the dilemma whether to kill the project or not?

(This is a serious question--what can possibly be more important to average virtualbox users than having a working desktop environment? Virtualbox has always occupied the desktop virtualization niche, so I'm trying to figure out what has changed...)

emeraldd8y ago

I use Virtualbox daily without ever using a desktop environment in the VM. It's very useful in headless form for development machines when working locally.

XorNot8y ago

I find this baffling when KVM is much more amenable to being scripted from the command line.

4 more replies

tcfunk8y ago

You don't even have to rule out DEs wholesale. Lightweight ones like XFCE run quite well with no 3D support.

raverbashing8y ago

> Without 3d support, basically no-one can use virtualbox

What? I can only laugh at such a statement

Don't use hyped up desktop managers that need 3D to work.

swiley8y ago

My personal laptop (1 GHz celleron) doesn't even have graphics drivers compiled and just uses the efi framebuffer. It's really great! It runs cool and performs well, software graphics are underrated. Just don't run ridiculous stuff like GNOME that's full of crazy animations every time you do something simple

1 more reply

stuaxo8y ago

It should be an option. 3D hardware is the best way we have to accelerate 2d these days.

noselasd8y ago

Both XFCE and Gnome 2 runs perfectly fine in Virtualbox.

Vogtinator8y ago

Likely everything except GNOME 3.

1 more reply

krzyk8y ago

Why do you need 3d acceleration for using a system? GUIs work perfectly without any 3D acceleration. Are you planing on playong games? If so it is not a good idea in any VM.

hedora8y ago

I use a minimalist window manager, but I think I am in the minority, even among software engineers that use linux as their primary development environment. This almost works, except web browsers are extremely GPU heavy these days, so JavaScript laden sites (jenkins, amazon, news) often become unusable with more than ~10 tabs.

Anyway, most engineers at work use unity because it is the default, and it is a non-starter without hardware acceleration. We site-licensed vmware, and it seems to work OK.

The last time I checked, the second most common choice is fvwm. It sorta works out of the box and isn't unity. Also, it can run on the big server VM's, unlike unity (there is no 3d acceleration in the server kvm instances...)

Another common choice is to do everything via console, productivity be damned. (There are some highly productive console users, but they tend to put linux on their laptops on day one anyway)

1 more reply

mirimir8y ago

I have fine desktop environments without 3D. Maybe I'm just totally old-school, but I've never even felt the need for 3D on physical machines. But then, I use VMs mainly with VPN chains and Tor, for isolation and compartmentalization. If I really needed a 3D desktop environment, I'd use a dedicated box, and route through whatever anonymization path needed, using another box as multi-VM router.

dhimes8y ago

Same. For the first time, because of VB, I have a Windows machine that I didn't wipe Windows from. I spend almost all my time in VBox. And I get to play with other distros risk-free.

But then, I spend most of my time in vim and localhost web pages.

I hope they get the help they are asking for- I wish I could do it. I think it's a great program and it would be great if it were here for a while.

Dylan168078y ago

It depends on the window manager. From my experience recently, lightdm without acceleration is snappier than cinnamon with acceleration.

nomercy4008y ago

It is free (compared to VMWare). It is easy to start with (compared to, say, Docker) It allows you to 'simulate' an architecture with multiple machines. Doing it all on one machine will have dependencies you didn't expect (eg shared env, everything localhost). It allows you to run a server application without cluttering your dev machine.

Buge8y ago

I've used a default Ubuntu desktop install in VirtualBox and it seems to work (though a little laggy). I haven't tried playing video games in it.

hamburglar8y ago

I don't understand how this is a "dilemma." It's like saying, "on one hand, I really need to mow my lawn. On the other hand, I really don't want to. It's a real dilemma!"

ChristianBundy8y ago

I think it's more akin to a free lawn mowing service that's having trouble cutting new types of grass.

It's like saying "On one hand, we really want to cut your grass for free. On the other hand, cutting new types of grass takes a significant amount of time that we don't have."

I get that it's really nice to have your cake and eat it too, but unless you're paying for said-cake I'm not sure that your critique is very accurate.

hamburglar8y ago

Don't get me wrong; I'm not demanding they fix this bug. They don't have the resources to prioritize it, and hey, that's their prerogative. It's a free product, after all. I just think calling it a dilemma is weird and makes it sound like there's some counter-argument to fixing the problem beyond "we don't have time."

simonh8y ago

They mow the grass on a park that's open to us all to use, but they don't have time to mow that bit over there. They're just asking if anyone else has time to do it instead.

dreamlayers8y ago

Trolling people in an attempt to get their lawn mowed by others.

petecox8y ago

Obvious question, why not just run an X11 server on the host?

Perhaps Oracle and Microsoft (WSL) can collaborate on supporting an X11 server (ones already exist) for Windows 10.

emeraldd8y ago

That would work, but perform like caro. There are a large number of effects that need shared memory tricks to work efficiently in X. So, any "modern" desktop is going to be iffy running that way.

hedora8y ago

For windows, try mobaxterm. I tried a half dozen x11 servers a few years ago, and it was the best by far.

It works great, modulo 3d acceleration. If I remember right, cut and paste work well, so that (plus a file share for Downloads) gets rid of the need to run a web browser in Linux.

Similarly, it can use the windows wm to manage the x11 windows, so you automatically bypass the linux compositor.

[edit: Also, Hyper-V is extremely fast in this type of setup, because they focus on server performance, and this workload looks like any other network/io intensive server]

skratlo8y ago

Can't you already do that? With DISPLAY variable. Although there could be less overhead in running local (guest) X server and stream only GL commands.

eshizhanOP8y ago

In some ways, many Linux beginners will choose to use VirtualBox to learn knowledge. If there is no good user experience with graphics hardware acceleration, we may lose many of the open source community supporters.

cpncrunch8y ago

I finally gave up on virtualbox and bought vmware instead for my mac. It works much better.

tcrews8y ago

Never worked well and we turn it off in our Vagrant boxes.

If you need 3D support in a VM on your workstation, use VMware Workstation 12... it's awesome (but Vagrant support sucks).

bhouston8y ago

We switched to lxc for vagrant, it is a amazing both for GPU support, speed of startup, and low memory usage. Would never go back to running full VMs via VB or VMware.

You could wait years for some 3D support in VB, or you could just side step the problem and go with lxc.

sandGorgon8y ago

Could you talk about how do you set this up (and how you use it) ?

I'm assuming that this is LiNux only.

cookiecaper8y ago

Same. These days, I usually use my Linux system in a Windows host with raw-disk passthrough and VirtualBox. I've tinkered with the 3D acceleration but all it's done is break things for me.

My experiments with VMWare show that while it does well on some things that VBox struggles with, it has its own areas of weakness/slowness, essentially making it a wash.

When I redo my system in the next few months, I plan on doing a Xen setup with GPU passthrough to Windows and then using Linux in parallel instead of hosted out of VBox.

scw8y ago

For the Vagrant VMWare support, are you using the official (paid) Vagrant provider or something else? I've been interested in hearing about experiences of using it.

eshizhanOP8y ago

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14102#comment:42

https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/11574

harrygeez8y ago

I tried running Arch Linux on both VirtualBox and VMware Player on my Windows machine at work and Compton's performance is terrible. It's strange because it runs so well on VMware Fusion on my MacBook. Can someone recommend a better way to virtualize Linux desktop with composition in Windows?

robinduckett8y ago

Use VMWare workstation?

wila8y ago

Nah, VMware Player and VMware Workstation use the exact same engine.

If you are having performance problems with VMware Player and are using either AVG of Avast antivirus then the problem might be the antivirus. See also [0]

[0] https://communities.vmware.com/thread/553759

1 more reply

mrmondo8y ago

Virtualbox is so far past dead to me, terrible networking issues and performance, dreadfully poor IO performance and oracle to top it off.

bhouston8y ago

Switch from vb to lxc/docker and you get great GPU driver support, even CUDA.

nine_k8y ago

... As long as you're running the same OS. Consider OS X and Windows hosts.

mynewtb8y ago

Completely different thing. Vb is VMs, lxc is containers

ansible8y ago

Really?

I was at one point trying to get GPU passthrough working with LXC and I could never get programs to actually run. Ubuntu 16.04, CUDA 7.5 or maybe 8.0, and a cheap GTX 730.

Maybe I'll have to try again. I was also trying this so that I could run my desktop environment in a container too.

vetinari8y ago

There is no passthrough in LXC, because it is containerization, not virtualization. You are running the same kernel and kernel modules for both systems.

1 more reply

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73 comments

justabystander8y ago

hedora8y ago

Without 3d support, basically no-one can use virtualbox, so is the dilemma whether to kill the project or not?

emeraldd8y ago

I use Virtualbox daily without ever using a desktop environment in the VM. It's very useful in headless form for development machines when working locally.

XorNot8y ago

I find this baffling when KVM is much more amenable to being scripted from the command line.

4 more replies

tcfunk8y ago

You don't even have to rule out DEs wholesale. Lightweight ones like XFCE run quite well with no 3D support.

raverbashing8y ago

> Without 3d support, basically no-one can use virtualbox

What? I can only laugh at such a statement

Don't use hyped up desktop managers that need 3D to work.

swiley8y ago

1 more reply

stuaxo8y ago

It should be an option. 3D hardware is the best way we have to accelerate 2d these days.

noselasd8y ago

Both XFCE and Gnome 2 runs perfectly fine in Virtualbox.

Vogtinator8y ago

Likely everything except GNOME 3.

1 more reply

krzyk8y ago

Why do you need 3d acceleration for using a system? GUIs work perfectly without any 3D acceleration. Are you planing on playong games? If so it is not a good idea in any VM.

hedora8y ago

Anyway, most engineers at work use unity because it is the default, and it is a non-starter without hardware acceleration. We site-licensed vmware, and it seems to work OK.

Another common choice is to do everything via console, productivity be damned. (There are some highly productive console users, but they tend to put linux on their laptops on day one anyway)

1 more reply

mirimir8y ago

dhimes8y ago

Same. For the first time, because of VB, I have a Windows machine that I didn't wipe Windows from. I spend almost all my time in VBox. And I get to play with other distros risk-free.

But then, I spend most of my time in vim and localhost web pages.

I hope they get the help they are asking for- I wish I could do it. I think it's a great program and it would be great if it were here for a while.

Dylan168078y ago

It depends on the window manager. From my experience recently, lightdm without acceleration is snappier than cinnamon with acceleration.

nomercy4008y ago

Buge8y ago

I've used a default Ubuntu desktop install in VirtualBox and it seems to work (though a little laggy). I haven't tried playing video games in it.

hamburglar8y ago

I don't understand how this is a "dilemma." It's like saying, "on one hand, I really need to mow my lawn. On the other hand, I really don't want to. It's a real dilemma!"

ChristianBundy8y ago

I think it's more akin to a free lawn mowing service that's having trouble cutting new types of grass.

It's like saying "On one hand, we really want to cut your grass for free. On the other hand, cutting new types of grass takes a significant amount of time that we don't have."

I get that it's really nice to have your cake and eat it too, but unless you're paying for said-cake I'm not sure that your critique is very accurate.

hamburglar8y ago

simonh8y ago

They mow the grass on a park that's open to us all to use, but they don't have time to mow that bit over there. They're just asking if anyone else has time to do it instead.

dreamlayers8y ago

Trolling people in an attempt to get their lawn mowed by others.

petecox8y ago

Obvious question, why not just run an X11 server on the host?

Perhaps Oracle and Microsoft (WSL) can collaborate on supporting an X11 server (ones already exist) for Windows 10.

emeraldd8y ago

That would work, but perform like caro. There are a large number of effects that need shared memory tricks to work efficiently in X. So, any "modern" desktop is going to be iffy running that way.

hedora8y ago

For windows, try mobaxterm. I tried a half dozen x11 servers a few years ago, and it was the best by far.

It works great, modulo 3d acceleration. If I remember right, cut and paste work well, so that (plus a file share for Downloads) gets rid of the need to run a web browser in Linux.

Similarly, it can use the windows wm to manage the x11 windows, so you automatically bypass the linux compositor.

[edit: Also, Hyper-V is extremely fast in this type of setup, because they focus on server performance, and this workload looks like any other network/io intensive server]

skratlo8y ago

Can't you already do that? With DISPLAY variable. Although there could be less overhead in running local (guest) X server and stream only GL commands.

eshizhanOP8y ago

cpncrunch8y ago

I finally gave up on virtualbox and bought vmware instead for my mac. It works much better.

tcrews8y ago

Never worked well and we turn it off in our Vagrant boxes.

If you need 3D support in a VM on your workstation, use VMware Workstation 12... it's awesome (but Vagrant support sucks).

bhouston8y ago

We switched to lxc for vagrant, it is a amazing both for GPU support, speed of startup, and low memory usage. Would never go back to running full VMs via VB or VMware.

You could wait years for some 3D support in VB, or you could just side step the problem and go with lxc.

sandGorgon8y ago

Could you talk about how do you set this up (and how you use it) ?

I'm assuming that this is LiNux only.

cookiecaper8y ago

Same. These days, I usually use my Linux system in a Windows host with raw-disk passthrough and VirtualBox. I've tinkered with the 3D acceleration but all it's done is break things for me.

My experiments with VMWare show that while it does well on some things that VBox struggles with, it has its own areas of weakness/slowness, essentially making it a wash.

When I redo my system in the next few months, I plan on doing a Xen setup with GPU passthrough to Windows and then using Linux in parallel instead of hosted out of VBox.

scw8y ago

For the Vagrant VMWare support, are you using the official (paid) Vagrant provider or something else? I've been interested in hearing about experiences of using it.

eshizhanOP8y ago

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14102#comment:42

https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/11574

harrygeez8y ago

robinduckett8y ago

Use VMWare workstation?

wila8y ago

Nah, VMware Player and VMware Workstation use the exact same engine.

If you are having performance problems with VMware Player and are using either AVG of Avast antivirus then the problem might be the antivirus. See also [0]

[0] https://communities.vmware.com/thread/553759

1 more reply

mrmondo8y ago

Virtualbox is so far past dead to me, terrible networking issues and performance, dreadfully poor IO performance and oracle to top it off.

bhouston8y ago

Switch from vb to lxc/docker and you get great GPU driver support, even CUDA.

nine_k8y ago

... As long as you're running the same OS. Consider OS X and Windows hosts.

mynewtb8y ago

Completely different thing. Vb is VMs, lxc is containers

ansible8y ago

Really?

I was at one point trying to get GPU passthrough working with LXC and I could never get programs to actually run. Ubuntu 16.04, CUDA 7.5 or maybe 8.0, and a cheap GTX 730.

Maybe I'll have to try again. I was also trying this so that I could run my desktop environment in a container too.

vetinari8y ago

There is no passthrough in LXC, because it is containerization, not virtualization. You are running the same kernel and kernel modules for both systems.

1 more reply

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