I am giving up on VM Gaming • Hacker News Board

Re: I am giving up on VM Gaming

#31

Post by thot_experiment » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

KetoManx64 wrote: post #29

thot_experiment wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best option is to run a Windows host with WSL and an extra EXT4 volume mounted to both windows and linux (this is a non issue as long as it's not the boot drive for linux). User WSL for everything linux, optionally you can also just mount the EXT4 volume with all your stuff to a real VM if you need to (this lets you have windows GUI apps in windows, tho maybe WSL does this now too?). Everything works, you have th…

I would recommend dual booting over doing this. Microsoft is user hostile and the only thing they care about Windows users is how much ad revenue they can get from shoving AI down their users throats. I recommend doing a dual boot. I personally do a multi drive dual boot, because again, Microsoft is user hostile and will sometimes randomly just blow away the Linux EFI partition if they're both on the same drive. . If…

Dual booting is hell, it's never good, it's never been good. I don't use my computer in a modal way. Willing to accept booting over as a friction point is crazy. You can just disable windows update and all the nags and then it's just a good operating system, mine often runs for many months without reboot. I have never seen a single ad in my OS.

It's absolutely not the best of both worlds if I can't simultaneously game (or run CAD software in my case) while running torch w/ triton at the same time.

Re: I am giving up on VM Gaming

#32

Post by thot_experiment » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

rrgok wrote: post #10

thot_experiment wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best option is to run a Windows host with WSL and an extra EXT4 volume mounted to both windows and linux (this is a non issue as long as it's not the boot drive for linux). User WSL for everything linux, optionally you can also just mount the EXT4 volume with all your stuff to a real VM if you need to (this lets you have windows GUI apps in windows, tho maybe WSL does this now too?). Everything works, you have th…

I did not understand the extra EXT4 volume. Do you mind explaining me the advantages of this workflow?

If you mount the Linux OS volume under windows while it's running it can get all fucked up because the two operating systems are not chill about who's really in control. You can avoid this by keeping the linux OS on it's own volume, but putting all the user data on a separate volume, you CAN mount this under both operating systems and get good speeds under both OSs, wheras using WSL native ability to access the host NTFS system is very very slow.

Re: I am giving up on VM Gaming

#33

Post by KetoManx64 » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

thot_experiment wrote: post #31

KetoManx64 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend dual booting over doing this. Microsoft is user hostile and the only thing they care about Windows users is how much ad revenue they can get from shoving AI down their users throats. I recommend doing a dual boot. I personally do a multi drive dual boot, because again, Microsoft is user hostile and will sometimes randomly just blow away the Linux EFI partition if they're both on the same drive. . If…

Dual booting is hell, it's never good, it's never been good. I don't use my computer in a modal way. Willing to accept booting over as a friction point is crazy. You can just disable windows update and all the nags and then it's just a good operating system, mine often runs for many months without reboot. I have never seen a single ad in my OS. It's absolutely not the best of both worlds if I can't simultaneously gam…

To each their own. I've been dual booting Linux for a decade, at first to learn Linux, and for the past half decade as the secondary OS for the 1/10 games that don't work under Linux. I'm a Linux engineer so all my workflows are Linux focused and I prefer the customizability, flexibility and hackability of Linux to Windows anyways.

I don't trust the Windows OS with any of my personal files. Even if you disable updates Windows is continuously pinging Microsoft, Bing and adtech servers. It continuously prompts you to install OneDrive and upload your files to their cloud and adds TikTok/Facebook/to start menu on a fresh install and you have to use a hacky workaround to actually do an offline install without logging into a Microsoft account. I'm looking forward to the day that Steam Linux has full game compatability and I can finally purge Windows from my system.

Re: I am giving up on VM Gaming

#34

Post by thot_experiment » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

KetoManx64 wrote: post #33

thot_experiment wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dual booting is hell, it's never good, it's never been good. I don't use my computer in a modal way. Willing to accept booting over as a friction point is crazy. You can just disable windows update and all the nags and then it's just a good operating system, mine often runs for many months without reboot. I have never seen a single ad in my OS. It's absolutely not the best of both worlds if I can't simultaneously gam…

To each their own. I've been dual booting Linux for a decade, at first to learn Linux, and for the past half decade as the secondary OS for the 1/10 games that don't work under Linux. I'm a Linux engineer so all my workflows are Linux focused and I prefer the customizability, flexibility and hackability of Linux to Windows anyways. I don't trust the Windows OS with any of my personal files. Even if you disable update…

Ahhh, I see the issue, you must be using a Windows other than Windows 10 LTSB and presumably you don't trust your router. I dual booted for a long time before VMs were good, but the user experience of booting over is just so awful.

Re: I am giving up on VM Gaming

#35

Post by BoKKeR11 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 8:39 AM UTC

guilhas wrote: post #16

> UNSOLVED: GPU sharing with docker and VMs Giving up because you can't solve 'cold fusion' is a common mistake, when we so focused on the problem and forget the goals At some point is just cheaper to get a second cheaper GPU. Or use a CPU with integrated GPU > GPU has to be bound to VFIO at boot You can bind and unbind them at any time. There are several guides for people doing it with only 1 GPU Just keep it simple…

Yes, I have gotten blinded with all the possibilities a server with a gpu should be able to do, on top of VM gaming. Binding and unbinding requires reboot on unraid, its great to know that its doable without it.