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KVM switch? Best Way to Set Up Windows and Linux

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:28:09 No.1423912 View View Reply Original Report

I use Win10 for SC2, but otherwise use Linux. I would like to sync Emacs Org-Mode and my .emacs config between the Win10 and Linux drives, and I don't want to have to reboot to switch to Linux. I don't want a dual monitor setup, but I'm not totally opposed to it (but also don't think that solves my problem).

It occured to me that I could just have one computer always running Win10, and the other always running Linux, then just use a KVM switch to and from as needed. Is this the best solution?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:39:16 No.1423916 Report

Quoted By: >>1423920 >>1423921 >>1423926

>>1423912
>Is this the best solution?
No, VMWare or KernelVirtualMachine or WSL2 is.

IMO, Windows is the best host because it provides GPU virtualisation, but you're probably not going to agree with me because microsoft.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:48:06 No.1423920 Report

Quoted By: >>1423921 >>1423930

>>1423916
Last time I tried this, I could not for the life of me get copying and pasting to work between a GuixSD guest with a vanilla llinux kernel and Win10 host. I was using VirtualBox. Which was sort of a showstopper for me. Will VMWare or KernelVirtualMachine or WSL2 be better?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:49:06 No.1423921 Report

Quoted By:

>>1423920
>>1423916
And yes I did install the additional media thing to enable copying and pasting, and went through all the steps and loaded the little CD thing. It was a long time ago, but I know I did everything recommended.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:55:06 No.1423926 Report

Quoted By: >>1423932 >>1423933

>>1423916
>IMO, Windows is the best host because it provides GPU virtualisation, but you're probably not going to agree with me because microsoft.
And I'm not opposed to Windows, I just know how Linux works and much prefer doing dev stuff on there. For me, doing anything dev related, or even basic sysadmin stuff like package management, on Windows is a huge headache by comparison, but I need it for Battle.net and some proprietary programs (Ableton, Remarkable, etc). So yeah just advise on me on which virtualization software to use I guess. I'm pretty insistent on using GuixSD, since I use Emacs + EXWM for everything.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 20:59:31 No.1423930 Report

Quoted By:

>>1423920
>Guix
Guix on WSL sounds like a massive pain in the ass, but then Guix sounds like a massive pain in the ass too.
Almost certainly it's the cause of all your clipboard problems, you would probably have needed to compile VMWare Tools yourself ("open-vm-tools") if you wanted them to work on a Guix guest.

I'm not sure why clipboard support is a dealbreaker though, if you were willing to accept a KVM switch that would have no clipboard support whatsoever.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:02:28 No.1423932 Report

Quoted By:

>>1423926
Given your use case you're probably best with KVM on Guix and a Windows guest. That might not pass anticheat though, and you might have difficulty getting any kind of GPU virtualisation working, which means you'd need two GPUs (or a GPU and onboard graphics), though two monitors wouldn't be strictly necessary as almost all monitors have more than one input.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:11:15 No.1423933 Report

Quoted By: >>1423934

>>1423926
>EXWM
Apparently you can run that on a WSLg guest so long as you install an X server on the WSLg guest. But I've not seen any actual success stories with this, just people saying "this is how it should work".

Anyways, tl;dr:
- if GPU is important to you, Windows host, VMWare Guix guest, compile open-vm-tools yourself, spend most of the time in a fullscreen VMWare window
- if linux being the window manager is important to you, Guix host, KVM Windows guest, maybe a second GPU
- if integration is most important to you, install Guix from scratch into a WSL2 container, and see how it goes.
All of these will be better than two computers and a KVM switch*, though WSL2 is probably the most fiddly and difficult.

* thanks Linux for naming Kernel Virtual Machines with the same acronym as keyboard/video/mouse

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:20:05 No.1423934 Report

Quoted By: >>1423938

>>1423933
>- if GPU is important to you, Windows host, VMWare Guix guest, compile open-vm-tools yourself, spend most of the time in a fullscreen VMWare window
This should work fine with EXWM, right? Your next line has me a bit concerned over that. I prefer Win10 host ultimately, just so when I do have to fuss with it, it's easy.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:22:01 No.1423936 Report

Quoted By:

VMWare website is confusing the shit out of me, what am I supposed to download?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:23:14 No.1423937 Report

Quoted By: >>1423941

Looks like this is what I want?
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/en/downloads/details?downloadGroup=WKST-PLAYER-1750&productId=1377&rPId=111473

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:23:49 No.1423938 Report

Quoted By: >>1423939

>>1423934
>This should work fine with EXWM, right?
Yes, though obviously EXWM will be managing the inside of VMWare window, not being the WM for the entire system.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:26:50 No.1423939 Report

Quoted By: >>1423942

>>1423938
Great, I'm working on setting this up now. I guess the annoyance with the clipboard not working in the guest was that I'd generally have Firefox open in the host, and if I came across something I wanted to copy (link, code, etc) it was highly annoying to need to hover my mouse back over to the guest and find the same stuff to copy. Just felt dumb when the stuff I needed was right in front of my face, and I did everything I could think of to get it to work but it wouldn't. But yeah, not really a big deal I guess.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:28:17 No.1423941 Report

Quoted By:

>>1423937
>https://customerconnect.vmware.com/en/downloads/details?downloadGroup=WKST-PLAYER-1750&productId=1377&rPId=111473
Yep. They renamed Player into "Workstation Player", presumably to draw attention to the upgrade path to Workstation. Unless you're a business, you probably don't need the features of Workstation: they're mostly about managing VMs centrally, storage pools, migrating VMs, generating them automatically and so on. Whereas you're probably going to boot a blank VM with an install image, which is perfectly fine on Player. I can't remember if Player has the virtualised GPU or not, but you'd need to get it going on the Guix end first anyway, which would mean a load of proprietary modules. Framebuffer is fine if you're not gaming.

I think Player is personal-use-only, but again only a problem if you're a business.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 03 Dec 2023 21:29:31 No.1423942 Report

Quoted By:

>>1423939
>Just felt dumb when the stuff I needed was right in front of my face, and I did everything I could think of to get it to work but it wouldn't
I can see why that would be annoying. If you go the two-computer route, there are network clipboard solutions, but I know nothing about them other than that they exist.

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