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There are sane people with this many VMs on a personal machine, right? RIGHT? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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).

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[-] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 points 51 minutes ago

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.

[-] refalo@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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.

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 15 hours ago

Is this like opening tons of browser tabs?

[-] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 13 points 23 hours ago

With that many Windows (gasp) ones, no... I'm afraid you are not

[-] Draegur@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago

There are many many many insane people who are running no virtual machines at all.

[-] nezach@discuss.tchncs.de 38 points 1 day ago

1000167081

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 39 minutes ago

*some

[-] tuck182@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

*sane

[-] Gallardo994@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago

Mutahar please log in to your main account

[-] Anarchistcowboy@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

Hey I get this reference.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 day ago

It's only insane if you have them all running at once.

[-] delirious_owl 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have about twice this many VMs and about this many running at any given time.

I use Qubes btw

[-] sntx@lemm.ee 2 points 14 hours ago

What do you use it for? How's the daily-driver experience?

[-] delirious_owl 5 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

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.

[-] delirious_owl 0 points 3 hours ago

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

[-] flashgnash@lemm.ee 7 points 11 hours ago

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

[-] radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

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

[-] delirious_owl 1 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] delirious_owl 2 points 4 hours ago

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

[-] fl42v@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 day ago

I guess you should use proxmox at this point 🤣

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 15 hours ago

Honestly they really should

[-] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I mean is there any really reason though, they both run on the same subsystem and they aren’t doing anything crazy

[-] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 2 points 22 hours ago

Have you automated creation?

[-] tdawg@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

linux users are sane?

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 15 hours ago

Users are sane?

[-] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago

Yes, but usually they'd have a more robust VM management system to stay sane for long.

[-] Damage@feddit.it 6 points 1 day ago

I mean, people collect all sorts of weird shit

[-] lnxtx@feddit.nl 9 points 1 day ago

Hell to update them regularly 👀

[-] Dagamant@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[-] olympicyes@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

I have about that many. Looks good to me! I have two Windows VMs. One for work and presentations. One for games and Adobe. A bunch of random Linux VMs trying to get a FireWire card to work and a Windows 7 VM for the same reason. I’ve also for several Linux VMs trying out new versions of Fedora, Ubuntu, or Debian. A couple servers. Almost none of them are ever turned on because my real virtualized workloads run in docker or LXC! I never could get Mac VM to work but I have an AMD CPU and a MacBook so not too high priority.

[-] flashgnash@lemm.ee 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Screen sharing from Linux is amusing though, so far I've yet to have anyone even mention it (hyprland so looks very different to Windows)

[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 8 points 1 day ago

I think you have a problem, there needs to be more to be normal.

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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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