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Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

looking-glass.io

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Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#71

Post by gnif »

Nullabillity wrote: post #54
Rd6n6 wrote: post #40

The question everyone is wondering: is this ready for serious use for gaming and productivity (Eg, photoshop or game development)? Or is it very hard to get a smooth workflow going? If the workflow is not great, is there a clear path to solving that?

You don't need this for general productivity software, only stuff where QEMU's emulated GPU is too slow or otherwise insufficient (so games, video editing, etc). The caveats are basically: 1. Setup is a bit annoying LG can feed input into any VM but requires guest support for capture, so you need to do the setup with a direct monitor. 2. The passed-through card must have a monitor connected. IIRC, this is an API issu…

    1. We are working on it
    2. Not if it's a vGPU or a Quadro where EDID spoofing is allowed
    3. No, we capture everything now, even the windows Login screen and windows updates, etc.
    4. Yes
    5. Very yes!

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#72

Post by gnif »

villgax wrote: post #51

What's with the name being the same as the holo display maker?

You mean what's with the Holo display maker having the same name as us?

We were using and had the name before they announced their product. If you want to get really finicky, you can ask why we are using the same name as Sun's Looking Glass desktop environment.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#73

Post by 411111111111111 »

geocrasher wrote: post #50
JustStoppinIn89 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not him but I'll echo the same thing. Unless I absolutely have no other choice, I'm not going back to this setup. It's how I "gamed on Linux" for a couple years. Support is basically you and you alone. The dev for Looking Glass is active but the man isn't your personal tech assistant so often you're just doing A/B testing to make something work. For me, I just didn't want to fiddle with my home desktop that much. I w…

The fiddle factor is why I'm using W10 as well. Linux is great, but on the desktop I just need things to work as-is. Linux on the desktop still doesn't have that. Maybe next year ;-)

> Linux on the desktop still doesn't have that

It does have it if all you want to do is develop, browse the web and similar things.

Including windows games into the things it needs to run without hassle is kinda unfair in my opinion, as that's pretty far from what this DE is used for regularly.

I went back to windows on my home pc because off games too, but my work environment with Ubuntu/regolith was significantly less painful to setup then the WSL hassles I had to jump through on windows before.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#74

Post by gnif »

gigatexal wrote: post #70
gnif wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games work just fine, just a few odd ones that decided to block VMs don't such as Tarkov. Known to work without issue are titles such as * PUBG * Battlefield 1/3/4/5 * Titanfall 1&2 * Arma 3 * 7 Days to Die * Ark * Fortnite * Apex * Halo: The Master Chief Collection * Star Wars Squadrons And many many more.

The only games I play are Doom Eternal and Starcraft 2 — by chance do you know if those work or if there’s a list somewhere?

No idea about doom, but Starcraft 2 works for me fine.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#76

Post by pantulis »

ksec wrote: post #75

I thought it was Project Looking Glass [1] from Java era. It was really cool back then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass

There is also the Looking Glass server software that ISPs provide to debug routing issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_server

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#77

Post by Nullabillity »

gnif wrote: post #71
Nullabillity wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need this for general productivity software, only stuff where QEMU's emulated GPU is too slow or otherwise insufficient (so games, video editing, etc). The caveats are basically: 1. Setup is a bit annoying LG can feed input into any VM but requires guest support for capture, so you need to do the setup with a direct monitor. 2. The passed-through card must have a monitor connected. IIRC, this is an API issu…

1. We are working on it 2. Not if it's a vGPU or a Quadro where EDID spoofing is allowed 3. No, we capture everything now, even the windows Login screen and windows updates, etc. 4. Yes 5. Very yes!

> 3. No, we capture everything now, even the windows Login screen and windows updates, etc.

B3 and B4 both have pretty huge improvements here, but there are still a few rough corners. For example, when logging out the host shuts down immediately upon request, so you can't see the "program X is blocking shutdown" dialog.

But ultimately this is a very minor papercut for a very impressive and useful project.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#78

Post by vbarrielle »

thejosh wrote: post #4

It performs really well. I love qemu/libvirt - the crazy thing is if you have two disks and use one to boot Windows, you can mount the disk then boot into that when using Linux and have that running off another video card (I have two in my PC, one AMD and and nVidia).

That sounds very interesting. Does that mean I should be able to load a VM containing my windows partition fron linux, even without a dedicated GPU? Do you have a pointer to a tutorial explaining the setup ?
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