Waiting for Vanessa

[Breelander]

Have you ever compared the behaviour between Hyper-V and VirtualBox?

I'm quite invested in using VirtualBox for development as I found their integration with the likes of USB pass through from the windows host to be pretty seamless; and I use that a lot.

But in the office there's a push to use Hyper-V for a because of some aspect of hardware that's about (or licensing - I confess I'm not sure really)
- and I'm hoping that it isn't really something I need to worry about
Short of maybe having to set up a new VM as a build server if it needs to run in that location rather than trying to clone/port an existing VM.

I use Hyper-V for almost all my VM's, the host machine has 32GB RAM, an nvme SSD and a 10th gen i7, so it works well for the dozen or so VM's I have. The one exception is another machine where I have VirtualBox installed, and a Windows 95 VM running in it. Hyper-V does not support installing a W95 guest.

What you need to know is that Hyper-V is a Type 1 hypervisor, and VirtualBox is Type 2. Each type has it's pro's and con's. For development work in a business environment Hyper-V is usually the more suitable choice, for home use VituallBox can be more useful, offering more direct access to the host hardware. More here:

There are pluses and minuses with each type:

In the domestic consumer market, the three main players are type 1 - Hyper-V (not for Home users), and type 2 (work with Home) - virtualbox (free version), VMware workstation (free version)

Hyper-V is really more geared to Windows virtual machines but will run alternative OSs but sound is typically not available. Biggest minus is it is not available to Home users.

VirtualBox and VMWare have more flexibility, but require more maintenance, particularly when a build upgrade = occasionally a build upgrade "breaks" the type 2 hypervisor.

https://www.tenforums.com/virtualizatio ... e-2-a.html

[servodude]

Have you ever compared the behaviour between Hyper-V and VirtualBox?

I'm quite invested in using VirtualBox for development as I found their integration with the likes of USB pass through from the windows host to be pretty seamless; and I use that a lot.

But in the office there's a push to use Hyper-V for a because of some aspect of hardware that's about (or licensing - I confess I'm not sure really)
- and I'm hoping that it isn't really something I need to worry about
Short of maybe having to set up a new VM as a build server if it needs to run in that location rather than trying to clone/port an existing VM.

I use Hyper-V for almost all my VM's, the host machine has 32GB RAM, an nvme SSD and a 10th gen i7, so it works well for the dozen or so VM's I have. The one exception is another machine where I have VirtualBox installed, and a Windows 95 VM running in it. Hyper-V does not support installing a W95 guest.

What you need to know is that Hyper-V is a Type 1 hypervisor, and VirtualBox is Type 2. Each type has it's pro's and con's. For development work in a business environment Hyper-V is usually the more suitable choice, for home use VituallBox can be more useful, offering more direct access to the host hardware. More here:

There are pluses and minuses with each type:

In the domestic consumer market, the three main players are type 1 - Hyper-V (not for Home users), and type 2 (work with Home) - virtualbox (free version), VMware workstation (free version)

Hyper-V is really more geared to Windows virtual machines but will run alternative OSs but sound is typically not available. Biggest minus is it is not available to Home users.

VirtualBox and VMWare have more flexibility, but require more maintenance, particularly when a build upgrade = occasionally a build upgrade "breaks" the type 2 hypervisor.

https://www.tenforums.com/virtualizatio ... e-2-a.html

Thanks that's all very interesting stuff

I'll do some digging but I think it sounds like I'll be using both
Hyper-V for an automatic build machine in the office virtual cluster (this has just been installed and I've been offered the space)
VirtualBox for the local stuff (as I need access to external hardware - and a bizarre security policy means the box on my desk needs to be running windows)
- now to investagate if the disc images can be converted to work between them

-sd

[Breelander]

- now to investagate if the disc images can be converted to work between them

This looks promising....

https://kags.me.ke/post/virtualbox-to-hyper-v/

[servodude]

- now to investagate if the disc images can be converted to work between them

This looks promising....

https://kags.me.ke/post/virtualbox-to-hyper-v/

yes it does!
thanks

[cinelli]

I thought it would be worthwhile relating my experience at installing linux Mint 21 Cinnamon on an underpowered laptop, in case anyone else is in a similar position.

I acquired my 2015 Toshiba laptop three years ago for £80. It has 2Gb of RAM and 30Gb of mmcblk storage. If I had had the opportunity to read the reviews, I would have passed it by. I thought I could take it home and upgrade both the memory and storage. In fact neither is possible. It had Windows 10 installed and it struggled. But with linux installed, it runs beautifully.

It has Mint 20.1 installed which is supported until 2025 so there is no need to upgrade, but I was curious of what Mint 21 has to offer. Running Mint live was a problem. As soon as I started the Firefox browser, response was very bad indeed – I was running out of memory. It was completely unusable. I have tried numerous live distros and I think this was the first time this has ever happened. Nevertheless I continued with the installation (initially to a 3.0 memory stick) to see if there was an improvement. There was. It takes a while to boot and login (perhaps 50 seconds) but then response is very good indeed. What was the difference between the live version and the installed version? I reasoned that it was the lack of swap space. The live version gives you none whereas the installed version for me has 2Gb. I later experimented by allotting 2Gb swap to the live version and the response picked up greatly.

The system requirements for Mint 21 are 2Gb RAM (4Gb recommended) and 20Gb of disk space (100Gb recommenced). This 100Gb figure puzzles me. My mature Mint installation never exceeds 15Gb although, of course, this depends on how much additional software is installed.

Cinelli

[Infrasonic]

I thought it would be worthwhile relating my experience at installing linux Mint 21 Cinnamon on an underpowered laptop, in case anyone else is in a similar position.

https://community.linuxmint.com/softwar ... ap%20space.

Zram is a Linux kernel module that allows you to set up compressed filesystems in RAM.

zram-tools uses this module to set up compressed swap space. This is useful on systems with low memory or servers running a large amount of services with data that's easily swappable but that you may wish to swap back fast without sacrificing disk bandwidth.

By default it allocates 100MB of RAM, you can configure this in /etc/default/zramswap.

Also running 'live' distros from a proper USB SSD with DRAM or SLC fast cache would probably help with low powered machines.
I'll have to do an A/B between some USB flash drives and my Samsung T5 SSD (DRAM) and see.

[GeoffF100]

A 32 bit OS will have smaller code. You could try LDME 5 Elsie:

https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=297

If that is not small enough, you could try Debian Bullseye with the Raspberry Pi Desktop:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ra ... i-desktop/

[GeoffF100]

The system requirements for Mint 21 are 2Gb RAM (4Gb recommended) and 20Gb of disk space (100Gb recommenced). This 100Gb figure puzzles me.

By default, Mint uses Timeshift and by default keeps five backups. That would take you up to or over 100GB. Nonetheless, Timeshift to another drive would make more sense (if you need it at all). You have said that you cannot update your laptop, but a 120GB SSD now costs just over £13. It is difficult to recommend less than that.

[Breelander]

...I acquired my 2015 Toshiba laptop three years ago for £80. It has 2Gb of RAM and 30Gb of mmcblk storage. If I had had the opportunity to read the reviews, I would have passed it by. I thought I could take it home and upgrade both the memory and storage. In fact neither is possible.

...You have said that you cannot update your laptop, but a 120GB SSD now costs just over £13. It is difficult to recommend less than that.

the '30GB of mmcblk storage' is not an SSD, it will be 32GB of eMMC storage soldered directly to the motherboard - and therefore not upgradeable.

Embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) and solid-state drive (SSD) storage have a lot in common...
...The "embedded" part of the name comes from the fact that the storage is usually soldered directly onto the device's motherboard....
...The low-cost nature of eMMC storage makes it ideal for cost-effective hardware, including truly budget PCs....

https://www.windowscentral.com/emmc-vs-ssd

[GeoffF100]

Yes, I understood that Bree. I was trying to say that although it is no use for cinelli's laptop, if he was able to upgrade or was getting a new one, it would not make sense to recommend less than 100GB. For LM 19 we had a recommendation for 2GB of main memory. That made me scratch my head. The recommendations for LM 21 are more sensible in my view, but of course you can get away with less. We are already starting to see used machines being sold off cheaply, now that the lockdowns are (hopefully) over, and as the end date for Windows 8 approaches, with Windows 10 not far behind.

[cinelli]

Thanks for the further discussion. As has been said the 32Gb storage cannot be upgraded. But the point I should have made more clearly is that an under-powered laptop which is hopeless for Windows 10 is perfectly usable for linux Mint Cinnamon. Indeed I am using it to make this post.

Cinelli