Installed Lubuntu 20.10 in a Gnome Box - Works Beautifully

[epp]

Hi. First post and new Lubuntu user.

I installed Lubuntu 20.10 last night inside a virtual environment (Gnome Box) and it works beautifully. No issues with software or in updating the packages. Want to try out other distros and this was an easy way to install.

Excellent work.

[KGIII]

I love playing with virtual machines. I’ve paid for VMWare but have been using VirtualBox lately. For my needs, VirtualBox does the trick just nicely.

[epp]

This was my first attempt at using a virtual box. A friend who is a Linux software engineer suggested trying Gnome Boxes, it was easy to install, even without the Gnome desktop installed.

Lubuntu sailed right through.

[KGIII]

Indeed. It’s a great app. You can also do QEMU via the terminal, and it’s pretty straightforward.

If you’re curious, here’s a link:

https://www.qemu.org/

It’s already in your repos and can be installed with apt.

Your friend is right, by the way. For example, QEMU is faster than VB and Gnome Boxes is a front end for QEMU. It can also virtualize more hardware, has a smaller footprint, and VB only supports 32 and 64 bit architecture.

Edit: I assumed you know that Gnome Boxes is a front end for QEMU. If you don’t, well, it is. Gnome Boxes is a graphical way to use QEMU.

[bjlockie]

Is Gnome Boxes faster than VirtualBox?

[wxl]

Why would they be? Ultimately the performance of any virtual machine is dependent on the host hardware, not the software running it.

[KGIII]

That’s the claim made elsewhere, and I’ve understood to be true. Here’s one such link that explains it:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43704856/what-are-the-differences-between-qemu-and-virtualbox

More links are available at your favorite search engine.

[wxl]

I can imagine some overhead with VIrtualBox relative to KVM, but not necessarily with some GUI running the show.

[KGIII]

With modern hardware, I doubt it makes much of an appreciable difference.

I could do some benchmarks and get a more-or-less empirical answer, though it’d only apply to the computer(s) I tested on. The page linked above has someone with a system monitor open, but that’s a very small sample size and hardly a complete test.

On modern hardware, even full Ubuntu loads rapidly on VirtualBox. Throw 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM at it and it works just fine. At my other computer, earlier today, I had multiple VMs open at once. I do that fairly often and it performs just fine.

[wxl]

We have some legacy software at work that requires a Windows install, which we run in VirtualBox. And we like using old legacy hardware to boot, too, so the fact we manage to stay productive is a testament to how well virtual machines, in general, run.

[KGIII]

(I forgot to hit the like button.)

And, if you ever want a good chuckle, go to slashdot.org and search for the first post where VMWare announced virtualization.

It’s full of wizened old geezers pointing out the various reasons it would never catch on, couldn’t work, or was otherwise useless. It includes such gems as, “I’ll just reboot to use Win95 if I need it!”

They were, all but a few people, so unaware of the benefits and felt that it was impossible to achieve. Many thought it was just hype for a product that would never reach the market.

Man, am I glad I didn’t post in that thread. That way I don’t have to eat crow! I probably would have been one of the “I’ll believe it when I see it” people. A couple of decades later and virtualization is all over the place.

[humpty]

Does Qemu or VB use intel cpu virtualisation ?

[wxl]

Unless I’m misunderstanding your question, all virtualization solutions willl.

[epp]

@KGill - No, I was not aware that Gnome Boxes was a front-end to QEMU. I had some issues with Fedora and it has since been replaced with another Linux distro, which included a VirtualBox installer. I then installed Lubuntu 20.10 inside a VB and it works well. Although I think it seemed faster running inside a Gnome Box vs a VB.

[KGIII]

Yeah, that’s my understanding. VBox has more overhead and is thus slower. Or so ‘they’ say… I find it easier to access all the features in VB and I’ve been using it for years, so I’ll take any penalty in performance that may come with it.

If you get bored, you can try out 21.04 in VirtualBox. I’ve been doing the daily builds for a little while now and am having far more fun with it than I’d expected. I’m learning a lot, which is always nice. In fact, I just noticed I’d marked one failed instead of passed. Oops!