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).

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months 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.

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    GPU passthrough has always been one of those exciting ideas I’d love to dive into one day. My current GPU being a little older, has only 4GB of RAM. Oh the joy’s of being a budget PC user. Thankfully it’s more of a “would be nice rather” than an “actually need”…

    • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Very few people need it but it’s awesome and a lot of fun and lets you spend more time in Linux than dealing with Windows. The VFIO Reddit and Arch wiki are great resources. I have GPU, USB, and Ethernet pass through on my Ubuntu machine and it works great, but I needed the Arch wiki to really figure out what I was doing wrong when I first set it up. Level1Techs is also a good resource on YouTube and forums because they are big into VFIO and SR-IOV. Next time you get a PC, make sure to look for more PCI lanes and bifurcation support on your motherboard. Gen 4 is a great option because it generally has enough lanes and the ram and ssd are much cheaper than Gen 5. GPU choice doesnt matter much but if you’ve got AMD watch out for the reset bug. Basically you can start a VM but once you quit it the cards state is unavailable for further use (eg a second VM session or reopening your DE if you’re using a single GPU setup) unless you restart your host. There are some workarounds but personally I’d avoid it if possible. Onboard graphics (iris or amd APU) are recommended. Older hardware can get cheap so good luck saving up if this is something you want to do!

    • radau@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I did this with Qubes a year ago and haven’t had any issues apart from figuring out the right flags to get the full performance, otherwise the GPU would cap around 30% under load with low CPU load.

      Kind of at the mercy of what your motherboard and bios will allow, mine I had to cheese a little and disable the PCI device on boot so I get to decrypt my disk with no screen lol but it works!

      • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 months ago

        My motherboard is a stock dell from around 2012 so I doubt performance would be at all good. Thats even if it worked in the first place…

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I think this VM is still on Sonoma, actually. I still need to upgrade.

      I can’t remember exactly what I did to get an installer image, but there’s a million shell scripts online for downloading macOS installer images. For booting it, I use this premade OpenCore for KVM/Proxmox. I have to check if I made other modifications (I run on an AMD CPU), but I think I mainly just had to set the serial and model - I personally used a 2019 Mac Pro.

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 months ago

        Yes, I downloaded it, but just couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a bootable installer ISO without an already working macos instance

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I think the answer is obvious. There are so many better alternatives available today. Some examples include:

      • Windows ME
      • Glorious Leader’s Red Star OS
      • Temple OS
      • Don’t use an operating system - sacrifice all your your time to studying the ways of the mighty Zarthadonatoxator instead. All hail Zarthadonatoxator! Zarthadonatoxator is the only true way!
  • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I had a VM but somehow the virtual drive got corrupted? And it wouldn’t let me install, update or uninstall VC++ runtime as a result. I’m gonna try again later, but it’s a worrying start.

  • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months 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.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months 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.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 months ago

    I always remove any virtual machines every time I’m done with it and reinstall if I need to use it again

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      It’s a terabyte SSD. I’ve currently got 136 GB left on it. I think part of it might be they’re auto-expanding qcow2 images, so they don’t actually take up the full space provisioned for them.