Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by stableviper » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

vbarrielle wrote: post #78

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 ?

Yes, I can confirm that this works. I have one windows installation and can either directly boot windows on the host or start it within Linux with VFIO.

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

#132

Post by pizza234 » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

hutrdvnj wrote: post #124

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried WSL, was buggy and had some issues with filesystem performance i think. I prefer having a 100% real linux & windows OSes that just work over slightly buggy workarounds. Plus i also host a lot of homeserver services (media server, SMB server, postgres db etc) on the linux host and its cleaner having those run on the host. If i want to do something very demanding on the host for example I can shutdown the VM.

Wouldn't it be easier to have 2 devices, one specifically designed for gaming and one running 24/7 for home server services. A cheap used Thinkpad could be used as linux device so it doesn't have to be expensive. Plus if you value your own time and effort you have to put in for your current setup, then it might actually be cheaper.

It depends on what do you mean with "easier".

Technically speaking, for machines where VFIO works, there is no maintenance, and the setup can be easy (excluding one significant issue due to a specific linux kernel upgrade, my VFIO setup procedure has been essentially the same for years, on multiple machines).

So, assuming that VFIO setup setup/maintenance is very easy, having a second machine is just redundant.

One convenience not to forget is safety. If a Windows VM gets infected for whatever reasons, rolling back the system is performed by literally deleting one file.

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

#133

Post by Cyph0n » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 8:57 AM UTC

ghostly_s wrote: post #95

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #57

I run a VFIO setup with a single GPU - the linux host is headless, and Windows runs on top with the GPU. Its pretty awesome. Windows runs at native performance - no problem gaming or running other heavy workloads. The linux host acts as a devbox and runs a few other homeserver style services. It's difficult to set up right but it taught me a lot about VMs and hardware. Once you get it setup well enough, its relativel…

The host is headless? So you're streaming the display via VNC or something to another system, or do you mean the host has a head but it's just being passed thru directly to the guest?

Headless host means you can only access the host system via SSH or web interface (e.g., if you’re running Proxmox). The guest VM “owns” the single GPU.

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

#134

Post by guilhas » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #81

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #6

One thing that isn't clear from the website is that it requires two GPUs, one for the host and one for the VM.

Wouldn't be it possible to let Linux/Xorg give up GPU for a time Windows is used? Which could still let me access it via VNC from Windows. My native platform is Xubuntu on AMD Renoir laptop.

That is already possible without the Looking Glass. Just regular libvirt GPU passthrough.

I would say the use case here would be a machine that does not have a monitor connected, for example some Bitcoin mining server in the attic. With Looking Glass the game screen can get streamed to a ultrabook in your living room, with the server GPU performance

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

#135

Post by Cyph0n » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #57

I run a VFIO setup with a single GPU - the linux host is headless, and Windows runs on top with the GPU. Its pretty awesome. Windows runs at native performance - no problem gaming or running other heavy workloads. The linux host acts as a devbox and runs a few other homeserver style services. It's difficult to set up right but it taught me a lot about VMs and hardware. Once you get it setup well enough, its relativel…

Same setup here! I am running Proxmox on the host to streamline managing VMs and storage. Proxmox comes with a nice web GUI, which makes it very east to monitor system state.

I have a Windows VM for gaming that owns the single Nvidia GPU. I also have a few Linux VMs for development (via VS Code remote) and media management.

As far as storage goes, I don’t have anything too fancy. Proxmox is installed on an SSD. I have a second SSD for VM images. For all other storage (media, photos, VM image backups, etc.), I have a 3 disk ZFS pool consisting of a single RAID-Z1 vdev - yea, it’s risky, but losing the pool wouldn’t be the end of the world.

One of the cool things about this kind of setup is being able to easily restore VMs from backup. Some time back, I accidentally screwed up my Windows install by enabling Hyper-V (nested virt). I panicked at first, but then remembered that I have daily snapshots of the VM. I had it back up and running within 10 minutes :)

All in all, it was fun to setup and has been running very smoothly.

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

#136

Post by schmorptron » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

Malwarebytes blocks this domain as a trojan, that's a false positive though, isn't it?

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

#137

Post by zaptheimpaler » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #135

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #57

I run a VFIO setup with a single GPU - the linux host is headless, and Windows runs on top with the GPU. Its pretty awesome. Windows runs at native performance - no problem gaming or running other heavy workloads. The linux host acts as a devbox and runs a few other homeserver style services. It's difficult to set up right but it taught me a lot about VMs and hardware. Once you get it setup well enough, its relativel…

Same setup here! I am running Proxmox on the host to streamline managing VMs and storage. Proxmox comes with a nice web GUI, which makes it very east to monitor system state. I have a Windows VM for gaming that owns the single Nvidia GPU. I also have a few Linux VMs for development (via VS Code remote) and media management. As far as storage goes, I don’t have anything too fancy. Proxmox is installed on an SSD. I hav…

Yes I love that an entire VM is basically 2 files - one disk image, one libvirt config. Makes backup and restore so easy :)

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

#138

Post by gnif » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

egeozcan wrote: post #118

gnif wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am :)

Also thanks for opening an account outside your community (here) just to help people. Also, didn't know that any 4 letter usernames were available here on HN anymore :)

Haha, yeah, it's why I like this handle, it's very rarely used anywhere.

As for support, I do encourage people to join the Discord or head on over to the L1Techs forums as I won't really be monitoring this very closely.

Edit: I mean I am at the moment because I am super stoked to make #1 on HN :D

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

#139

Post by c7DJTLrn » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

I have a lot of respect for the VFIO crowd but speaking as an administrator of Linux systems myself, I didn't ever find the effort or pain worth it. I run a native Windows 10 system for games because the last thing I want after a workday of fixing corporate systems is having to fix my own system just so I can chill out and play a game.

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

#140

Post by lillecarl » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

Kiboneu wrote: post #45

Reminds me of the time I'd use a patched ACPI table on my gaming VM to mock a battery for the NVIDIA driver (similar to [0]). The drivers checked and deliberately failed when a battery wasn't present in conjunction with a mobile GPU. Setting up looking glass itself wasn't much of a problem though. I got some AAA games cutting on my gentoo laptop like butter, though the mouse movement was more jelly unless I VFIOd my…

I'm doing this with NixOS and too, it was really simple. NixOS unstable hasn't been problem free though, it breaks quite often in the unstable channel, most usually though I just roll the channel back and wait it out. Right now I'm stuck with kernel 5.12 because nvidias shit Linux driver support.