this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I want to get into Arch Linux, but I don't have that much experience and I feel like it'll be easier to set it up in a virtual machine rathen than dual booting, I've used Oracle VirtualBox before but it's very laggy. Are there any other VMs that aren't as laggy, or do I just have a hardware issue?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If your computer is a Linux, QEMU/KVM with libvirtd is great. If you run a Windows 10 or higher, HyperV works great, you should also be able to grab a VMware Player if it's still free. For Mac you have Parallels I believe.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Gnome Boxes is also great for simple stuff on Linux. Besides there is virt-manager as GUI for libvirt. On macOS UTM is a good free and open source tool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Sorry I meant virt-manager yeah, I think it is part of libvirtd

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I'll try it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

HyperV doesn't let you adjust the screen size does it? I tried to use it for work but that held me back

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I believe you need to install the drivers for it. Something similar to vmwaretools but for hyperv.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Oh okay, I couldn't even find any screen settings, so I assumed it was just not possible. Thanks, I'll look into it :)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I'd say VirtualBox is still your best bet b/c of its well-polished user interface - ie unless you plan to play games.

very laggy

Had you installed "extension pack" & "guest additions"? If not, please do! They make a world of difference.

Grab them for the version you've installed from VirtualBox downloads directory. Install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-x.y.z.vbox-extpack on your machine and VBoxGuestAdditions_x.y.z.iso on your VM.

For example, for version 7.0.10:

HTH

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've never tried the extension pack, but I do have the guest additions. How do you install it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Here's a decent guide on how to do it for an Ubuntu VM (instructions should apply to Arch too.) Since you'll be manually downloading guest-additions, just skip the "prerequisites" section.

An here's a guide on how to install the extension pack.

Pray, post here if you run into any troubles (you shouldn't ✌️.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Thank you! I'll be back if I run into some trouble. :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Hello, no I haven't installed the packs yet. Will do so, thank you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You used VBox on Windows, huh? Because it works great on Linux and is absolute garbage on Windows. The distro is secondary here. Try VMWare Workstation Player, there's a free version. Works way better in my experience. As for Arch: Look at Garuda Linux, then try to replicate it on EndeavourOS and you'll know pretty much everything about customizations you need.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

alright, thank you

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Desktop usage is almost always going to feel laggy in a VM because you don't have a real GPU inside the VM and it will fallback to some non-accelerated framebuffer mode. There are some GPU virtualization solutions, for example QEMU has virgl that offers 3D acceleration, but in my experience it's buggy/not ready and doesn't offer near bare metal performance.

The only way to get near bare metal graphical performance in a VM is by using PCI pass through of an entire GPU, but that requires an extra GPU, is non-trivial to setup and comes with a lot of caveats.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

VM has an option to enable GPU acceleration iirc, would that solve it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Probably not. There are no implementations that I'm aware of that work well on a Linux guest.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Don't worry, if he installs Arch from scratch, it will take him a long time before even having internet connection or installing X.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's just a meme. If you can follow some basic instructions, you can setup arch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This. There's archinstall now, too. A bit buggy in my experience so I prefer the old fashioned way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dunno why are people spreading this myth... Arch is not that hard to install and you don't get a gold medal for installing it. I installed it with LXDE in an office machine, it only took me an hour.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It depends, I installed it from base, text mode, I had to edit some config file to add my network interface and systemctl restart network etc, then pacman to install X, Xfce, etc, by hand. I guess the best thing is to install Manjaro for instance, it takes a few minutes and you have full GUI and everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=5KNK3e9ScPo

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Have you heard of our lord and savior chroot?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Do you have prior Linux experience apart from experimenting with Arch in Virtualbox?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've used Pop_OS!, Mint and a little bit of Ubuntu before

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I recommend putting Fedora with your preferred DE on a thumbstick and experimenting with that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Go to eBay and search “thin clients” - you can get one for about $30, install arch and go nuts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Use KVM and virt manager instead of Virtual box because KVM gives your VM direct access to the bare metal so it runs way better. Virtualbox is running your VM via an abstraction layer which adds overhead and reduces performance.

Just Google how to install KVM on your distro.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago

You should use Debian.