Hi,

I finally installed VirtualBox 3.0.8 on Jaunty and found an old Windows
Vista DVD which was laying around the office. It even had the reg number
(or whatever they call it) on it. I have not run Windows since 95 so it
was kinda exciting to install and run Vista for the first time. But man,
it took time! The install went on "forever". Then there we tons of updates
and reboots where even Windows update had to update itself! :) How
complicated can it be?

I finally ended up with a Vista desktop. It was slow and sluggish and not
very pretty even. What really struck me though was how slow it was to
respond to anything I did. I assigned the VM 2 gigs of memory and was
hoping to be able to determine how Windows runs these days. If this is
close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad. So I wonder, how much
performance degradation can one expect running Windows in VirtualBox on
Ubuntu compared to a native install on the same machine? I have seen posts
where people say they get almost the same performance from the VM as they
do from a full install. That can not be true? If it is I am so glad I do
not have had to deal with an MS os . I seem to remember that Windows 95
was slow on one of my computers back then. But this was not bad, it was
just awful on my Core Duo 2.2 ghz 4 gb ram with nvidia graphics.

ceed wrote:
[..]
> close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad. So I wonder, how much
> performance degradation can one expect running Windows in VirtualBox on
> Ubuntu compared to a native install on the same machine? I have seen
> posts where people say they get almost the same performance from the VM
> as they do from a full install. That can not be true? If it is I am so
> glad I do not have had to deal with an MS os . I seem to remember that
> Windows 95 was slow on one of my computers back then. But this was not
> bad, it was just awful on my Core Duo 2.2 ghz 4 gb ram with nvidia
> graphics.
>

never, ever saw great performance using virtualbox.. I don't know
percentages but I'd say its at least 15-20% slower for windows 7 beta. I
have quad core 2.4ghz, ati and 4gb ram. Vista beta seemed slower, but
its been a while since then and diff version of virtualbox and xubuntu.
Gave it 2gb memory, and two cpus in config.

Hope that helps in some small way
Geo

On 2009-10-27, ceed <cdposter-usenet> wrote:
>> Hi,
>
> I finally installed VirtualBox 3.0.8 on Jaunty and found an old Windows
> Vista DVD which was laying around the office. It even had the reg number
> (or whatever they call it) on it. I have not run Windows since 95 so it
> was kinda exciting to install and run Vista for the first time. But man,
> it took time! The install went on "forever". Then there we tons of updates
> and reboots where even Windows update had to update itself! :) How
> complicated can it be?
>
> I finally ended up with a Vista desktop. It was slow and sluggish and not
> very pretty even. What really struck me though was how slow it was to
> respond to anything I did. I assigned the VM 2 gigs of memory and was
> hoping to be able to determine how Windows runs these days. If this is
> close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad. So I wonder, how much
> performance degradation can one expect running Windows in VirtualBox on

XP in emulation seems snappy enough for work purposes. Perhaps I would
not want to do multimedia with it but even that seems more or less workable.

Your Vista results are perhaps being skewed by attempts to make heavy
use of GPU accleration (especially 3D).

[deletia]

ceed wrote:
[..]
> close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad. So I wonder, how much
> performance degradation can one expect running Windows in VirtualBox on
> Ubuntu compared to a native install on the same machine? I have seen
> posts where people say they get almost the same performance from the VM
> as they do from a full install. That can not be true? If it is I am so
> glad I do not have had to deal with an MS os . I seem to remember that
> Windows 95 was slow on one of my computers back then. But this was not
> bad, it was just awful on my Core Duo 2.2 ghz 4 gb ram with nvidia
> graphics.
>
Hello Creed

Really for running Virtal Machines you need memory for the OS + Memory
for the Virtual Machine and really for Vista to run smooth 4Gb is best.
In your case how much memory did you allocate to the Virtual Machine.

You will not get Aero theme using Virtual Box as it will not use the
functions of the NVIDIA GPU.

How many processors did you allocate ?

Mike

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:19:02 -0500, Michael John Ruff
<mr002i1702> wrote:


> Hello Creed
>
> Really for running Virtal Machines you need memory for the OS + Memory
> for the Virtual Machine and really for Vista to run smooth 4Gb is best.
> In your case how much memory did you allocate to the Virtual Machine.

2 GB. 4 gb to run smooth? Whoa!
>
> You will not get Aero theme using Virtual Box as it will not use the
> functions of the NVIDIA GPU.

I did enable hw accelleration in the setting. Is that not for my nvidia
gpu? I did not have Aero running. Maybe that is why I though it looked
kinda ugly? I do not really know in any detail what Windows should look
like, so this is just my personal opinion.
>
> How many processors did you allocate ?

For the Vista vm the amount of processor field is grayed out and says "1".

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:39:31 -0500, ceed wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:19:02 -0500, Michael John Ruff
> <mr002i1702> wrote:
>>
> 2 GB. 4 gb to run smooth? Whoa!
>
> I did enable hw accelleration in the setting. Is that not for my nvidia
> gpu? I did not have Aero running. Maybe that is why I though it looked
> kinda ugly? I do not really know in any detail what Windows should look
> like, so this is just my personal opinion.

It is my understanding that virtualizing software 'insulates' the guest
system from the real hardware by presenting itself as a more or less
generic hardware platform. i.e. vista in that configuration may not even
be aware there is an nvidia graphics card - have you checked that?
[..]

ceed wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:19:02 -0500, Michael John Ruff
> <mr002i1702> wrote:
>>
> 2 GB. 4 gb to run smooth? Whoa!
>
> I did enable hw accelleration in the setting. Is that not for my nvidia
> gpu? I did not have Aero running. Maybe that is why I though it looked
> kinda ugly? I do not really know in any detail what Windows should look
> like, so this is just my personal opinion.
>
> For the Vista vm the amount of processor field is grayed out and says "1".
>Hello

Yes there is HW acceleration, but vista will not use the GPU, what is
the rating of the components on the Vista Running in the Virtual Box.

On a native system I get 5.9 for CPU, Graphics and Drive, 5.0 on memory,
5.6 on Gameing. 8Gb Ram, 2.4Ghz Quad Core, SATA II drives all be it
64Bit Vista.

Same Vista running in Virtual Box on same system dual boot Ubuntu is 5
on everything apart from Graphics and Memory which I get 3.5.

Mike

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:56:17 -0500, Michael John Ruff
<mr002i1702> wrote:

> Hello
> Yes there is HW acceleration, but vista will not use the GPU, what is
> the rating of the components on the Vista Running in the Virtual Box.
> On a native system I get 5.9 for CPU, Graphics and Drive, 5.0 on
> memory, 5.6 on Gameing. 8Gb Ram, 2.4Ghz Quad Core, SATA II drives all be
> it 64Bit Vista.
> Same Vista running in Virtual Box on same system dual boot Ubuntu is 5
> on everything apart from Graphics and Memory which I get 3.5.
> Mike

I didn't know about this rating thing, until now that is. I get 3.5, but I
do not know what it would have been on a full install (I won't do it!:)

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:54:34 -0500, ray <ray> wrote:

> It is my understanding that virtualizing software 'insulates' the guest
> system from the real hardware by presenting itself as a more or less
> generic hardware platform. i.e. vista in that configuration may not even
> be aware there is an nvidia graphics card - have you checked that?

I checked that now and it only says "standard vga adapter". Guess that
contributes a lot to the miserable performance?

ceed wrote:
> Hi,
>

> I finally ended up with a Vista desktop. It was slow and sluggish and
> not very pretty even. What really struck me though was how slow it was
> to respond to anything I did. I assigned the VM 2 gigs of memory and was
> hoping to be able to determine how Windows runs these days. If this is
> close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad.
>

Since nobody else is going to admit to running Vista ;-) I thought I'd
chip in.

I have a Core 2 Duo (2.0GHz) with 3 Gig of ram which is used as a games
machine. Vista is useable, but is by no means "snappy". With the (very
fast) nVidia graphics, using Aero makes no difference to the speed but
doesn't improve the experience either.

My other machine is Kubuntu 8.04 using KDE 3.5. It's streets ahead for
speed despite being on a somewhat less powerful machine.

Another Dave

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:13:47 -0500, JEDIDIAH <jedi> wrote:

> Your Vista results are perhaps being skewed by attempts to make heavy
> use of GPU accleration (especially 3D).

Not tried to anything but browse using IE (ick!) and look at how the OS
works in general. I am not a gamer, so I do not really care too much about
3d performance.

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:12:34 -0500, Another Dave <dmarsden>
wrote:

> Since nobody else is going to admit to running Vista I thought I'd chip
> in.

Le'ts hope the OS police isn't on duty today, but watch out for words like
bugger and *-droid and such coming your way. On the other hand, they will
be investigating your headers anyway. It's kinds like fingerprinting.:
They use it against you right away, or store for the future and throw it
at you if you say or do something they do not approve of :)

ceed wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:12:34 -0500, Another Dave <dmarsden>
> wrote:
>
>> Since nobody else is going to admit to running Vista I thought I'd
>> chip in.
>
> Le'ts hope the OS police isn't on duty today, but watch out for words
> like bugger and *-droid and such coming your way. On the other hand,
> they will be investigating your headers anyway. It's kinds like
> fingerprinting.: They use it against you right away, or store for the
> future and throw it at you if you say or do something they do not
> approve of :)
>

I'm fully expecting it!

I probably won't see any of it - most of usual suspects are filtered out.

Another Dave

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:06:15 -0500, ceed wrote:

[..]
> hoping to be able to determine how Windows runs these days. If this is
> close to what one can expect it's pretty damn bad. So I wonder, how much
> performance degradation can one expect running Windows in VirtualBox on
> Ubuntu compared to a native install on the same machine? I have seen
> posts where people say they get almost the same performance from the VM
> as they do from a full install. That can not be true? If it is I am so
> glad I do not have had to deal with an MS os . I seem to remember that
> Windows 95 was slow on one of my computers back then. But this was not
> bad, it was just awful on my Core Duo 2.2 ghz 4 gb ram with nvidia
> graphics.

VirtualBox is the slowest of the VM platforms, for Windows VMWare Server
is the fastest. That said I'm not sure if a virtualized Vista can ever
run faster than syrup in January. If you are really interested in being
able to run Windows applications in your Linux environment I'd suggest
that you install an XP or 2K VM. I run 2K, and occasionally XP, on VMware
and it's really fast. I've also installed them on KVM. If you use
rdesktop to access them instead of the KVM consoles (which use VNC) the
performance is acceptable but not as good as VMware. For Linux VMs, for
example if you wanted to run CentOS5 on top of Ubuntu or Fedora, KVM is
the way to go. KVM has the best Linux on Linux performance.

I don't know enough about Vista to tell you if it's possible to turn off
enough features to make it perform acceptably. My laptop came with Vista.
After it took a half an hour to boot and 4 hours to make it's backup DVDs
I said screw it and deleted it entirely and replaced it with Fedora. I
did try a beta of Windows 7 on VMware, it was incredibly painful. I don't
think that was a fair test, Windows 7 was a beta and VMware had no
specific Win7 support. However even if Win7 is as improved as they say,
it makes no sense for a Linux user to run it as a VM at the moment. The
reason to run a Windows VM is to provide a compatible env to run Windows
applications which means that you want an XP VM because it's has the best
"Windows" compatibility. You don't care about any OS capabilities because
it's just a guest OS, and you don't care about any of the new UI features
because it's not your primary env. What you care about is the ability to
run Windows applications, speed, and the smallest possible footprint (to
make it easy to backup your VM). Win2K is the fastest and smallest
Windows, however Windows software makers are starting to drop support for
it. XP is a little larger and a little slower but for the next five years
or so you can count on it being supported by every Windows software
maker. Vista was a baby so ugly that it's own mother couldn't wait to
drown it, so why would you want to ever run it? Win7 brings nothing to
the party for a Linux user. In 3 or 4 years it might make sense to run as
a VM, but not now.

On 2009-10-27, ceed <cdposter-usenet> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:13:47 -0500, JEDIDIAH <jedi> wrote:
>
>> Your Vista results are perhaps being skewed by attempts to make heavy
>> use of GPU accleration (especially 3D).
>
> Not tried to anything but browse using IE (ick!) and look at how the OS
> works in general. I am not a gamer, so I do not really care too much about
> 3d performance.

The fact that you are not a gamer is no gaurantee that Microsoft won't
try and make it mandatory for you to have a respectable 3D card. This was
one of the problem with the Vista certification program.