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Comment by Snawoot | Hacker News Reader

I use Windows inside Linux KVM virtual machine mostly for gaming. One of my GPUs passed through into VM with PCI passthrough.

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Even then, you're still using Windows and might reasonably want to block telemetry...

It'll be much easier to do this on host machine. And much more reliable. However, in my home network raspberry pi with pihole handles filtering among many other things.

For single-player gaming it's OK to disable network on guest windows completely. ISO images with games can be just mounted via virt-manager GUI.

Same setup here. Best of both worlds IMO. Only drawback is to use the GPU on the linux host for e.g. Blender, I need to reboot (GPU can't rebind to PCIe root otherwise or something... thanks Nvidia)

>GPU can't rebind to PCIe root otherwise or something... thanks Nvidia

dose this only happen on nvidia, or amd as well?

When I need to use GPU on Linux, I just start Linux guest VM and run what I need (some native Linux game or hashcat usually). It may seem little bit inconvenient, but I'm happy with such isolation: main system kernel runs not tainted, and Nvidia drivers not always stable - I've seen panics caused by nvidia kernel module.

that would happen with any pcie card, even non graphics ones

I do it the other way around because 1) I "only" have one GPU, 2) it entirely solves driver-caused instability or other pain in Linux, since Virtualbox Linux drivers are really stable, and 3) it lets me easily suspend-to-disk, resume, and point-backup my running work sessions, which is really nice.

I set out building this thing as a Linux workstation, but I guess 1-1.5 generations old hardware was still too cutting-edge. Drivers exist, but X & Wayland (tried both) crashing or permanently artifacting multiple times a day was no fun. Zero crashes since wrapping Linux in Win10 with Virtualbox. Frankly, I should have just paid double for a worse MacOS machine, given the time I've sunk into this. Win10 is spy/adware garbage but it's what I'm stuck with now to have a usable machine.

[EDIT] Oh and, surprisingly, RDP to Windows then fullscreening Virtualbox Linux is less painful, better performing, and easier to configure (as in, was no work) than similar on Linux, aside from X-forwarding.

to you and parent, what's your experience running games in a VM? i prefer to run linux, but there are a few games that are windows only that i'd like to play.

which VM software are you using? can you recommend any resources?

It's very close to native performance. Only major issue I had is crackling sound, but it's resolvable. In my setup I have second set of controls (keyboard + mouse) to be forwarded to guest and HDMI output of guest GPU is connected to HDMI switch. Once everything set up, it looks and feels like you have second PC under your desk.

I use conventional Linux KVM virtualization ("libvirtd" + "virt-manager" GUI) on Fedora 32 (previously used Debian).

Most valuable resource is Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

I've never used Arch Linux, however I always refer to Arch Wiki - it's extremely useful even for other distros.

nice, a second desktop would mean that two people can use the machine at the same time. i like that.

i was mostly worried about demanding games needing graphics features that would not work in a VM. (and usb support for the bank dongle)

i am also

aparently incapable of properly proofreading my messages

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