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How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

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Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#61
post #60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about a native 'Click to open' function. The article only mentions sharing a folder to make it visible from the VM.

He implemented click to open too. He states that goal at the begining: "should be searchable and launchable from Ubuntu dash." If you read the rest you'll discover how he implemented that.

gmq is probably talking about opening psd files in your Ubuntu file browser by right clicking them and selecting "open with Photoshop". That's not possible with the method i'm describing in the article. But it's something that's bugging me too and I'm working on a solution. I haven't quite figured it out yet though.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#62
post #46

Is anyone running the opposite setup? That is, Windows as the primary OS and Linux in a VM. I'm looking to upgrade my laptop soon and don't want to pay Apple's high prices, so I'm looking at 1080p Windows laptops. I'm considering Windows as the base OS and a Linux VM for development stuff. I do web development, including design work, so I would need the ability to run Photoshop and other tools. But for running my rub…

Honestly, 99% of the time that I want to use linux it's because I want a more powerful command line. My current setup is usually windows/osx as my host system, and a simple putty connection to either a local headless VM, or often one of my linode servers. If you're familiar with vim/emacs, a command line is a perfectly acceptable development environment.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#63
post #20

Might as well just VirtualBox step and just install Windows instead of Ubuntu...

But what if for all the other applications, for example out of security and performance concerns and by desire of not having to reboot every patch-tuesday, he prefers to not run Windows?

Both of these things were addressed in Windows 8.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#64
post #57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any advantage to running the install native. I've actually had more issues in native installs than through VMs. As a side note, if anyone is interested in running an Ubuntu desktop VM, I highly recommend Lubuntu. It's extremely lightweight and fast, it's perfect for VMs.

How do you configure your VM once you install it? I seem to have a lot of performance issues unless I get a pre-configured VMWare image. The only image I've ever gotten to run as fast as a native install is the Official Backtrack VMware .iso. I've installed several distributions, including Lubuntu, along with the VMware tools, but I always get really poor performance when I try to set up my own VMs.

2 processor cores and 2G of memory is all mine needs to perform well. Perhaps my level of "fast enough" is much slower than yours, but my VM doesn't feel any slower than the host.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#65
post #64
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you configure your VM once you install it? I seem to have a lot of performance issues unless I get a pre-configured VMWare image. The only image I've ever gotten to run as fast as a native install is the Official Backtrack VMware .iso. I've installed several distributions, including Lubuntu, along with the VMware tools, but I always get really poor performance when I try to set up my own VMs.

2 processor cores and 2G of memory is all mine needs to perform well. Perhaps my level of "fast enough" is much slower than yours, but my VM doesn't feel any slower than the host.

I have a 2nd gen i7 and 16gb on the host. I think I tried everything up to 8 cores and 4 gb, but it still seems like everything is slow.

So you don't do anything special to optimize it?

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#66
post #46

Is anyone running the opposite setup? That is, Windows as the primary OS and Linux in a VM. I'm looking to upgrade my laptop soon and don't want to pay Apple's high prices, so I'm looking at 1080p Windows laptops. I'm considering Windows as the base OS and a Linux VM for development stuff. I do web development, including design work, so I would need the ability to run Photoshop and other tools. But for running my rub…

If you go for windows (host) and linux (guest) for dev tools & console stuff you should definitely check CoLinux. It's a very neat virtualisation, where the linux kernel works as another process on widnows, and the performance is really good. However, for the GUI stuff you will need some vnc pipe.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#67
post #35

Photoshop in a VM? is that not a horribly laggy experience? I have a Core2 Quad Q6600 based computer and when I have run Windows inside a VM it is too laggy to use as a serious desktop beyond using a few basic apps. Doing 1080p video is choppy too. Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation hugely faster and more responsive?

>> Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation hugely faster and more responsive? Yes. http://ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology Running the Android Emulator on my i7-3770k is smooth as silk with Intel Virtualization turned on. Without IV it's like rubbing my face on sandpaper.

Many Core 2's also have VT-x, including the GP's Q6600. [1]

Probably the biggest difference in performance is in using up-to-date VM software and giving the guest machine sufficient memory.

1. http://ark.intel.com/products/29765/Intel-Core2-Quad-Process...

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#68
post #55
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people... on Hacker News or eHow?

I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate that you pretty much have to walk them over and sit them down in front of a text editor. Most people around here seem to have somewhat decent system-admin skills, but there's also lots of students and even professionals who just haven't messed around with virtualization very much. I'm pretty good at using VMWare to set up Linux system…

> I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate

I have not witnessed this myself but I have heard countless stories from friends/colleagues in the same vein - there seems to be indeed a big gap between one's coding abilities and the overall computing knowledge.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#69
post #65
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 processor cores and 2G of memory is all mine needs to perform well. Perhaps my level of "fast enough" is much slower than yours, but my VM doesn't feel any slower than the host.

I have a 2nd gen i7 and 16gb on the host. I think I tried everything up to 8 cores and 4 gb, but it still seems like everything is slow. So you don't do anything special to optimize it?

No, nothing at all. I have an ivy bridge i5, 8GB 1600, and two old nvidia geforce 8600 under sli. Perhaps the people at /r/techsupport could help. Full screen in my VM feels just like booting into Ubuntu - no lag at all.

Re: How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu

#70
post #46

Is anyone running the opposite setup? That is, Windows as the primary OS and Linux in a VM. I'm looking to upgrade my laptop soon and don't want to pay Apple's high prices, so I'm looking at 1080p Windows laptops. I'm considering Windows as the base OS and a Linux VM for development stuff. I do web development, including design work, so I would need the ability to run Photoshop and other tools. But for running my rub…

I use Windows most of the time due to needing Visual Studio for some Windows related development as well as wanting to play current games in my free time. I also need Linux tools for web and Android development (mainly Android OS modding/compiling).

I supplement windows with a virtual machine running just a Debian terminal interface with 512mb of ram devoted to it. From that, I can run PostgreSQL, MySQL, Apache Ngnix or whatever else wouldn't be so great to keep on Windows. The added benefit of that is I keep my development enviroment seperated from the rest of my PC so I don't have to keep all the services running all the time unless I need them.

When I do have the VM on, I just keep it running in the background on one core and don't even notice it's there other than the ssh terminal I interact with in putty. As for other Linux needs, I can get by mostly with using Cygwin + puttycyg[1] for scripting python/perl/bash/etc. Overall, I haven't felt the need to use dual booting in a few years since adopting that approach.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/

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