Half of these exist because I was bored once.
The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.
I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don’t like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.
The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github’s CI doesn’t support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I’m doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).
It’s only insane if you have them all running at once.
Hell to update them regularly 👀
Nah, most of the windows ones don’t get updates any more and the Linux ones can get a script that updates on boot. Takes longer to start up but handles the job itself.
That’s why I’m starting to prefer LTSC.
I run a different LXC on Proxmox for every service, so it’s a bunch. Probably a better way to do it since most of those just run a docker container inside them.
I wouldn’t call that terribly efficient.
I would do 2-3 VMs with docker and maybe a network share
Why mix docker and VMs? Isn’t docker sort of like a VM, an application-level VM maybe? (I obviously do not understand Docker well)
Serious answer, I’m not sure why someone would run a VM to run just a container inside the VM, aside from the VM providing volumes (directories) to the VM. That said, VMs are perfectly capable of running containers, and can run multiple containers without issue. For work, our Gitlab instance has runners that are VMs that just run containers.
Fun answer, have you heard of Docker in Docker?
I like to run a hypervisor host as just that, a hypervisor host. The host being stable is important, and also reduce attack surface by only having it as that.
An LXC per service is somewhat overkill. A docker host running on LXC could likely run all the docker containers.
I mentioned above, and not to spam, but there might be a use case that requires a different host distribution. Networking isolation might be another reason why. For 90% of use cases, you’re correct.
LXC is much more light weight than VMs, so it’s not as much overhead. I’ve done it this way in case I need to reboot a container (or something goes wrong with an update) without disrupting the other services
Also keeps it consistent since I have some services that don’t run in docker. One service per LXC
I have a real use case! I have a commercial server software that can run on Ubuntu or RHEL compatible distributions. My entire environment is Ubuntu. They also allow the server software to run in a docker container but the container must be running RHEL. Furthermore, their license terms require me to build the docker container myself to accept the EULA and the docker image must be built on RHEL! So I have an LXC container running Rocky Linux that gets docker installed for the purpose of building RHEL (Core is 8) imaged docker containers. It’s a total mess but it works! You must configure nested security because this doesn’t work by default.
Instructions here: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/how-to-run-docker-inside-lxd-containers#1-overview
Me and my multiple personalities taking turns driving this sinking boat of a life.
For windows I either use a mingw toolchain from mxe.cc or just run the msvc compiler in wine, works great for standard C and C++ at least, even when you use Qt or other third party libraries.
Interesting enough, there is a project that I’ve found that runs Windows in a Docker container as a VM.
https://github.com/dockur/windows
I run a Windows 10 LTSC that way to run things like Blue Iris for my security cameras, and some stuff to track my solar installation.
Sounds nice, how useable is it?
runs Blue Iris and I can rdp into it over a cellular modem fine. And its running on an ancient i3
I mean, people collect all sorts of weird shit
If I could get vbox to work* on my laptop or find the drive to learn QEMU, then I would have plenty on there. For now I’m just stuck with plenty on my desktop running win10.
*I have installed it a few times on my Debian based distro, but I swear every time I do nothing to it and it destroys itself. Works fine one day, then the next I turn on my laptop, after the only changes being that I created and ran a VM and it decided to hate me and not even boot the program. I think I’m just cursed.
What about Virt Manager GUI, which is what I use here? It’s a frontend for QEMU and it’s not that difficult, honestly.
I’ll have to look into it because I’d love to have some VMs on my laptop since it way outperforms my desktop specs wise
I had a VM but somehow the virtual drive got corrupted? And it wouldn’t let me install, update or uninstall VC++ runtime as a result. I’m gonna try again later, but it’s a worrying start.
That just sounds like classic Winsanity right there, not a hard drive issue.
I’ve had another try, this time I set chattr +C on the image directory just in case my using btrfs was causing issues.
I guess you should use proxmox at this point 🤣
Honestly they really should
I mean is there any really reason though, they both run on the same subsystem and they aren’t doing anything crazy
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Have you automated creation?
I have about twice this many VMs and about this many running at any given time.
I use Qubes btw
What do you use it for? How’s the daily-driver experience?
itd be bad as a daily driver imo
Its my only computer. I couldn’t go back to anything else. Every time I double click Firefox, it opens a new VM. When I close Firefox, the VM is destroyed.
Email is in a separate VM. Email attachments also open in a disposable VM. USB devices are quarantined unless I connect them to a specific VM. Its a game changer.
Cons: I need as much ram as I used to need when I ran Windows. Watching videos is a bit choppy at full screen sometimes. And I can’t play any video games.
Sounds like some pretty serious cons
Out of curiosity why do you like qubes? Having everything in a VM doesn’t sound that great to me
I get that the main concern of it is security but what do you do that it demands that level of hardening? I’ve only ever got one virus in my life that I know of as it is and that was on windows
Lol wut? Those pros far outweigh the cons. But I guess I don’t care about video games?
I have money on my computer, and I have a company that has customer info. That’s enough of a reason for me to want to protect my shit better than running one big, super-vulnerable system
Not op but I do a lot of architecture and infrastructure work on top of my normal dev work so keeping everything separated and per-client has become a pretty important advantage for me personally
Yeah I also consult with many different clients. Sometimes those clients need me to install sketch software. Thank god I can do this in a silo in Qubes, or it could endanger my other clients.
Yep that I imagine is one of the main intended use cases, in my case would probably be overkill though
Fwiw I had to tinker a bit to get good video playback, Fedora was always choppy for me for some reason but debian is typically smooth with hw accel disabled.
As for the gaming, depending on your setup (I have a desktop and T480 I keep in sync) you can absolutely run two video cards and do PCI passthrough on one to a gaming VM. I have mine set up with a dedicated NIC and USB card and just use a KVM to swap between Qubes and Windows (for now) and it’s worked really well. Had to play around a ton to get the full speed out of the GPU though and it only seemed to work in windows so hopefully get that going for a Linux hvm one day.
Absolutely agree there is no going back, I have all of my work stuff entirely hardware agnostic and a full on replica of my work desktop ready to go in a moment should the desktop die. Apart from that keeping client work isolated has been such a game changer.
I use Debian. Like I said, video is only sometimes choppy. I usually have a few vlc windows open at one time. Something I’ve learned is that it will use a lot of CPU even if the video is paused. To stop it, I have to manually set the video source to “none” when I pause a video and leave it in the BG.
Or just pause the whole VM. Another great Qubes feature
Something I’ve learned is that it will use a lot of CPU even if the video is paused.
this has been my experience with it on windows too, so it must be a core VLC thing. if it bothers you, I recommend you to try out MPV. been using it for more than a year, would never go back. If you need more than the on screen controller and key combos, there are quite a few proper GUI players being built on MPV.
*sane
*some
*lame
Yeah.
My home server runs that many, but it’s a monster dual xeon.
The freebsd instances have a ton of jails, the Linux vms have a ton of lxc and docker containers.
It’s how you run many services without losing your mind.
