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).

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    7·
    3 months ago

    The biggest reason why I don’t want maintain so many Vms is, because all the maintenance and updates that involve doing so.

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      And that’s why there’s a “-2” on the end of that arch vm - there was one before that I borked while trying to update it because I hadn’t used it in so long.

  • IsusRamzy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    You can say: “I use Arch, Fedora, Windows, MacOS, Gentoo, LFS, Debian, PopOS, and more, btw.”

  • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Well I do but I have a machine with 3/4 of a terabyte of memory on it.

    Work scraps are great sometimes.

    How are you running the MacOS VMs. The machine I have is a cheese grater so that makes it easier.

    • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Are you running macOS or Linux as your host? My MacBook is M1 and I found the performance running ARM windows and ARM Fedora via UTM (qemu) to be pretty good.

      • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        On the cheesegrater(2019 MacPro) it’s a little convoluted. During covid times it was my single box lab since it had so much memory (768TB). So I was running nested ESXI hosts and then VMs under that. I also have a M1 MacBook Pro that I had parallels run ARM VMs (mostly MacOS, Windows, and a couple of Debian installs I think).

        I have been looking at VMWare alternatives at work so for the hypervisors I’ve been playing around.

        I do this stuff for a living but I also do it home for fun and profit. Ok not so much profit. Ok no profit but definitely for the fun. And because I love large electric bills.

        • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          That’s a beast of a Mac. Wake on lan is your friend. I have the same problem with my Threadripper. I wrote a script that issues a WOL command to either start/unsuspend my Ubuntu machine so I can turn it off when not in use. It’s probably $70/month difference for me. Most of my virtualization is on Linux but I’ve moved away from VM Ware because QEMU/KVM has worked so well for me. You should check out UTM on the Mac App Store and see if that solves any of your problems.

          ETA: https://mac.getutm.app/

          • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Man this thread has taught me all sorts of things. I will definitely check out UTM. Thanks for that!!

      • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Ok I’ll have to try this. The weird thing is my little test proxmox server is a 2013 trashcan. So this would be like a hackintosh running on Mac hardware. Would that technically be a hackintosh? I’m not really sure. According to the Apple license you can virtualize MacOS if it’s running on Mac hardware. I’m not sure if that requires MacOS as the hypervisor. Regardless this is not something I knew about. Very cool. Thanks for the info.

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    GPU passthrough has always been one of those exciting ideas I’d love to dive into one day. My current GPU being a little older, has only 4GB of RAM. Oh the joy’s of being a budget PC user. Thankfully it’s more of a “would be nice rather” than an “actually need”…

    • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      Very few people need it but it’s awesome and a lot of fun and lets you spend more time in Linux than dealing with Windows. The VFIO Reddit and Arch wiki are great resources. I have GPU, USB, and Ethernet pass through on my Ubuntu machine and it works great, but I needed the Arch wiki to really figure out what I was doing wrong when I first set it up. Level1Techs is also a good resource on YouTube and forums because they are big into VFIO and SR-IOV. Next time you get a PC, make sure to look for more PCI lanes and bifurcation support on your motherboard. Gen 4 is a great option because it generally has enough lanes and the ram and ssd are much cheaper than Gen 5. GPU choice doesnt matter much but if you’ve got AMD watch out for the reset bug. Basically you can start a VM but once you quit it the cards state is unavailable for further use (eg a second VM session or reopening your DE if you’re using a single GPU setup) unless you restart your host. There are some workarounds but personally I’d avoid it if possible. Onboard graphics (iris or amd APU) are recommended. Older hardware can get cheap so good luck saving up if this is something you want to do!

    • radau@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I did this with Qubes a year ago and haven’t had any issues apart from figuring out the right flags to get the full performance, otherwise the GPU would cap around 30% under load with low CPU load.

      Kind of at the mercy of what your motherboard and bios will allow, mine I had to cheese a little and disable the PCI device on boot so I get to decrypt my disk with no screen lol but it works!

      • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 months ago

        My motherboard is a stock dell from around 2012 so I doubt performance would be at all good. Thats even if it worked in the first place…

  • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.placeEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I do have as many too at work.

    I use one VM for each iteration of my automation software. Our factory has machines ranging from the 90s to present day, and they use different software environments to be programmed. In order to minimize the risk of data loss, we have one virtual machine with every software environment, that way if one gets corrupted, the damage is contained. It also makes them easier to export to new computers when we need to replace ours.

  • bruhSoulz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Bahah i have like 7 but im concerned by the fact i probably forgot the password to half of em xD

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I think the answer is obvious. There are so many better alternatives available today. Some examples include:

      • Windows ME
      • Glorious Leader’s Red Star OS
      • Temple OS
      • Don’t use an operating system - sacrifice all your your time to studying the ways of the mighty Zarthadonatoxator instead. All hail Zarthadonatoxator! Zarthadonatoxator is the only true way!
    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I think this VM is still on Sonoma, actually. I still need to upgrade.

      I can’t remember exactly what I did to get an installer image, but there’s a million shell scripts online for downloading macOS installer images. For booting it, I use this premade OpenCore for KVM/Proxmox. I have to check if I made other modifications (I run on an AMD CPU), but I think I mainly just had to set the serial and model - I personally used a 2019 Mac Pro.

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 months ago

        Yes, I downloaded it, but just couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a bootable installer ISO without an already working macos instance

        • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I could be totally delusional, but I think it’s just something like dd if=whatchamacallit.dmg of=whatchamacallit.img. I think you can get a net install image through macrecovery, which is a utility included with OpenCore packages.

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    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.