MX Linux Forum

Never used VM in Linux, there are several flavors of VM for Linux, which one is best suited (uses less resources, faster speed, etc.) for MX Linux, the VM will be used to install Windows 8.1. Questions:
1) Had very bad experience with Windows 10 (installing updates/upgrade even with update disabled). Not sure if 10 will do the same under VM.
2) Is it recommended to "tweak" Windows in VM to your liking or it's better leave it alone? When I was a Windows user, every couple of years, I had to re-install Windows, otherwise it'll freeze/hang for no reason, Since Windows default install many un-needed apps, thinking in removing those apps to reduce resource usage.
3) any other recommendation/tips when running Windows 8.1 in MX?
ps: Is there any site with tutorial/recommendation/configuration for using Windows in VM?

Probably the biggest question is *how* your wanting to use Windows? ( ie what for ) ... Depending upon how you use it will depend on how well it performs, how you set it up etc.

My personal experience ( and most people will have one :-) ) , is that VirtualBox is the best solution. Not for speed, not for mega controls.. however for ease of use, being able to tweak it if needed, assigning resources, controlling etc. And, its already on board MX :-) .

As for windows ... 8.1 is an abomination. You are FAR better to install win 10 and then properly tune it. Running win10 in a VM is actually pretty good once setup, and if you want to do it right, then dont use windows for surfing or email or *anything* else other than what you *need too use it for* , and keep it clean! One of the worst things about windows are the drivers.. and running in a VM the drivers get minimized and are less problematic.

Some cool things about the VM.. you can easily shut off windows so that it cannot reach the internet, keeping it from updating, or phoning home etc. (I advise against that, your FAR better off to tune win10 so that it runs better anyway. )

Somethings that will help stabilize windows and keep it running for a VERY long time :
- Dont use is on the internet - period ! ( no mail, no surfing,etc)

- Use your MXlinux to do ALL surfing and email etc. And as much work on it as possible, then the Win10 guest machine to do what you need to do in Windows.

- Dont install a bunch of stuff on it. Install JUST what you need to use it. (in my case - development tools only )

- After installation, go through and turn off *ALL* background apps that win 10 loads up, also spend some time and go through privacy settings and turn off everything that is not needed. (you can find many resources discussing this - but if you REALLY want it to run good - turn OFF *everything* in the privacy section - period!) I dont uninstall all of it, just turn it off in the background - in my experience attempting to 'remove it all' is more problematic, just let it be dormant.

- Dont scrimp on memory or disk space. Everyone will tell you that windows will run in 4gb (heck even 2gb) of memory. And if you dont want to do anything with it, then it will. However if you want windows to run good, then 8gb is minimum (and 16 is better!) . If your doing ANYTHING that requires real ram ( development tools, graphics, databases etc), then you need to be in the 12 to 16gb range and in a vm that means your host machine needs around 32gb to be 'nice' when running the vm. ( I can hear you all screaming - yes yes 16gb on the host and 8gb in the guest vm will work just fine, but I prefer to have BOTH my host and vm's work NICE and not frustrate me!! )

For my use, I found Virtualbox settings to be pretty good right out of the box. Some tweaking can improve performance and some windows tweaking can help too. However, I found to get it all setup, clean / tune / privacy your windows as good as you can and then go after specific things to speed them up - if you need too.

And again - if your not using windows on the internet, then its not a huge thing to just turn off the network for it and dont let it update and go to the internet. If you are going to use it limit your internet use on it, then you should be updating and making sure its up to date. ( but use linux for everything you can ! :-)

CharlesV wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:25 pm Probably the biggest question is *how* your wanting to use Windows? ( ie what for ) ... Depending upon how you use it will depend on how well it performs, how you set it up etc.

And again - if your not using windows on the internet, then its not a huge thing to just turn off the network for it and dont let it update and go to the internet. If you are going to use it limit your internet use on it, then you should be updating and making sure its up to date. ( but use linux for everything you can ! :-)

Thanks so much for your detailed explanation, I'm afraid I'll have hard time with my current pc (has only 6GB RAM), as for Windows, I'll be using internet (but not for surfing, mainly to use Line and Adobe Digital Edition apps, only available in Windows, already migrated MS Office to LibreOffice). I guess what I'll do is to be patient until replace the pc. Thanks again for those valuable tips.

For my humble needs, I've found Windows 10 in VirtualBox giving it 4 GB meets all my humble needs -- so far to update the maps in my Garmin GPS. I also still have Windows XP in a VirtualBox virtual machine and give it 2 GB RAM, but I used to give it just 1 GB. I almost never run these things. The Windows XP VM is probably about 15 years installed and used just for QuickBooks auditing and some lightweight MS Publisher editing of other people's work. I cringe every time I use them.

I agree with the observation about Windows 8.1, and 8.0, and Vista in spades.

I use VirtualBox and have for more than 10 years. These days I assign each VBox 'machine' 8GB of my total 24GB. The bugger flies. MX offers one f the best setups for VBox, in my humble opinion. kudos.

Lol, there always has to be at least one contrarian..

I switched from Virtualbox to VMWare Player this past year and I'm loving it! Virtualbox is a wonderful product but it doesn't like full preempt kernels which I need and I've found it often doesn't like newer Kernels to build it's modules and so far VMWare has no issues with either..

manyroads wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:58 pm I use VirtualBox and have for more than 10 years. These days I assign each VBox 'machine' 8GB of my total 24GB. The bugger flies. MX offers one f the best setups for VBox, in my humble opinion. kudos.

24GB!!!! This is my dream machine!

AVLinux wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:29 pm Lol, there always has to be at least one contrarian..

I switched from Virtualbox to VMWare Player this past year and I'm loving it! Virtualbox is a wonderful product but it doesn't like full preempt kernels which I need and I've found it often doesn't like newer Kernels to build it's modules and so far VMWare has no issues with either..

Thanks for the tips, what about the hw resources? I read over the net that VirtualBox takes a lot of resources, since I'm low in resources, maybe it's better I use VMWare instead of VirtualBox?

The amount of resources consumed by VirtualBox depends on how much RAM, virtual disk space and how many processor cores you alloce to each virtual machine (VM) in their settings as well as how many of them that you run at the same time. I was able to run VB with a MX Linux VM on a laptop with a 1st generation Core i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM with no problems, as long as the host machine (the physical laptop) wasn't also running several resource-hungry apps at the same time as VB.

Be aware that (AFAICT) VMware is commercial software and as such isn't supported here.

figueroa wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:02 pm For my humble needs, I've found Windows 10 in VirtualBox giving it 4 GB meets all my humble needs -- so far to update the maps in my Garmin GPS. I also still have Windows XP in a VirtualBox virtual machine and give it 2 GB RAM, but I used to give it just 1 GB. I almost never run these things. The Windows XP VM is probably about 15 years installed and used just for QuickBooks auditing and some lightweight MS Publisher editing of other people's work. I cringe every time I use them.

I agree with the observation about Windows 8.1, and 8.0, and Vista in spades.

Windows 10 in VM will install all kind of craps into OS? When I was using it (alone not under VM), it installed all sort of craps into OS, in less than a year, I ran out of HD space (I assumed that it was like Windows 8.1, when one disables update, it stayed disabled, but to my surprise Windows 10 does it on the background, even when update is disabled, didn't leave a lot of spare HD space for OS, mostly for data partition). So now I try to stay away from 10 as much as I can.

JayM wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:04 am The amount of resources consumed by VirtualBox depends on how much RAM, virtual disk space and how many processor cores you alloce to each virtual machine (VM) in their settings as well as how many of them that you run at the same time. I was able to run VB with a MX Linux VM on a laptop with a 1st generation Core i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM with no problems, as long as the host machine (the physical laptop) wasn't also running several resource-hungry apps at the same time as VB.

It's good to know, since I have only 6GB of RAM in my machine (it's a laptop with i3), so I guess I'll be OK, I think I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks for this tip.

Just don't give your VM more than 2GB of RAM and don't have tons of browser tabs open on the host machine while the guest machine's running (two or three tabs should be OK) and it should work just fine. Of course it depends on how resource-hungry the guest OS is, I suppose. A Linux distro for example should be fine.

JayM wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:04 am The amount of resources consumed by VirtualBox depends on how much RAM, virtual disk space and how many processor cores you alloce to each virtual machine (VM) in their settings as well as how many of them that you run at the same time. I was able to run VB with a MX Linux VM on a laptop with a 1st generation Core i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM with no problems, as long as the host machine (the physical laptop) wasn't also running several resource-hungry apps at the same time as VB.

Be aware that (AFAICT) VMware is commercial software and as such isn't supported here.

VMWare Player is as 'free' as Virtualbox for non-commercial use, it's big sibling is payware but I'm happily running 3 VM's in the free version.

It's still proprietary closed-source software though (AFAIK.) Don't they have their own support community-forum for their free version? That would be the place to get VMware support, not here, was my point.

it would seem to I've settled on using:
- 3500Mb for win-10 /32bit
- 5500Mb for win-10 /64bit
and that does seem to work, fairly well.
plus the default virtual drive size, is set to Double that, which the wizard would suggest.

JayM wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:18 am Just don't give your VM more than 2GB of RAM and don't have tons of browser tabs open on the host machine while the guest machine's running (two or three tabs should be OK) and it should work just fine. Of course it depends on how resource-hungry the guest OS is, I suppose. A Linux distro for example should be fine.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

It's all up to you. It's up to the user to manage their Windows 10 virtual machine.

I've been working on AQEMU to try distros, work on university projects that require setting up a Linux/BSD machine, stuff like that. For Windows, I would also consider Gnome Boxes. It seems simpler with a first look. I probably won't be using Windows on a VM, because my two main jobs there are Digital Systems Test-Benching, and Audio Engineering, so I must dual boot and use all the resources available to me. But lately (ie. since my last Windows unexpected re-install three days ago), I've been thinking of dual-booting some lightweight linux distribution only to run a VM. I will get used to having some resources used by the host, but the input lag when recording might prove too much. If you have the disk space but lack CPU power like me, consider this dual boot trick as well.

For your case, I recommend a Win10 2019 LTSC ISO image (no bloat, only basics for business use, search around for the real msdn iso, not the trial from windows site) and 3GB allotted with 256MB vram and 3D acceleration enabled. Assign atleast a real core if you have dual core cpu (If you have 2 core + 2 HT, then 2 in total). Follow other advice like no unneeded app installs, privacy settings. LTSC also doesn't pull many updates, only business-stable ones.

agnivo007 wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 1:23 am For your case, I recommend a Win10 2019 LTSC ISO image (no bloat, only basics for business use, search around for the real msdn iso, not the trial from windows site) and 3GB allotted with 256MB vram and 3D acceleration enabled. Assign atleast a real core if you have dual core cpu (If you have 2 core + 2 HT, then 2 in total). Follow other advice like no unneeded app installs, privacy settings. LTSC also doesn't pull many updates, only business-stable ones.

Interesting, I'll try to find one and give it a try. Thanks.

won't you still need an valid product key:
- for that win-10 LTSC Enterprise ISO ? ?

Pierre wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 3:29 am won't you still need an valid product key:
- for that win-10 LTSC Enterprise ISO ? ?

I said no trial iso from ms site; it can't be activated in any way. Key isn't required for installing at all.
ISO Clue: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/commen ... sh_for_me/
I don't want to discuss activation here (sensitive topic), but you can search for "msguides"

I too use MXLinux for main system. (Still dualboot with windows).

But on MXLinux, i use virtualbox, for Windows10, when need small stuff like Office & n'such.
You could go with Windows 10 Ameliorated, to use less ram.
Or search around a bit, "Windows 10 Pro - Superlite", and come across a forum that themselves, create modified windows version "superlite". (Torrent sources, at your own risk).
I use currently one of they're modified ones, on a VM. Just 900MB on startup. No WindowsDefender,Noupdates, super stripped. But still allows office tools

@g3lux , many are aware of such unofficial slimmed iso's, but they as usual, come with a warning : at your own risk and contents not verified.

It is better to refer to official MS builds (which suits a user's needs) in a public forum where many people pick up clues from. So, we must be responsible in suggesting iso's.

agnivo007 wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 12:52 pm @g3lux , many are aware of such unofficial slimmed iso's, but they as usual, come with a warning : at your own risk and contents not verified.

It is better to refer to official MS builds (which suits a user's needs) in a public forum where many people pick up clues from. So, we must be responsible in suggesting iso's.

Of course, unofficial does multiple things that you can't easily verify. So at own risk about data while using it.
I use them for doing university docs stuff (non-critial data, of sorts).
There are a variety of powershell scripts on GitHub (quite a bit of searching), but that you could use to strip windows as much as possible to minimize ram/cpu usage (disabling metro apps, and much more).