Most convenient to be the Host of various virtual machines: KDE, LXDE or XFCE?

[joejac]

Hello,
Which would be the most convenient PCLinuxOS to be the Host of various virtual machines: KDE, LXDE or XFCE?
Thanks a lot.
Best regards
joejac

[Phil]

Hi JJ,

That sounds like a trick question. I assume say Virtualbox will run conveniently on any on those desktops. So I surmise the question is which system will chew up less ram, making more ram available to the guest machines.

From your list I think XFCE would require least resources thereby providing more potential resources to the guests (say 500 - 800 megs of ram per guest).

If it is on your main machine what desktop do you prefer?

[joejac]

Thanks a lot Phil for your recommendation,

I like KDE, you know, I came from many years using M$.
In my laptop I was using LXDE as Host because I thought it was more efficient and use less resources. In my main VM I have also LXDE not for taste but for efficiency. I have never tested XFCE, today I will get my new SSD in my new Desktop PC and I have to make my new installation for my next 3 years, so I wanted to use the most efficient OS. I will download XFCE and try it. I use 4GB RAM and 2 CPUs per guest.
Thanks a lot.
Best regards
joejac

[Phil]

Hi JJ,

"I use 4GB RAM and 2 CPUs per guest"

That is my entire main machine. In terms of resources KDE needs the most (say 1 gig of ram and an ok processor), then LXDE, and then XFCE.
I think you need to ponder and design your system. Try XFCE in your existing virtualbox setup as a "live" cd with say 500 megs of ram. You might be able to start an existing virtual machine from a terminal, without a desktop....

Back to you to work out what you want. Note you can have KDE, LXDE, and XFCE on the host and at the login choose which desktop session to run. Install the others looking for task-??? in synaptic. For virtualbox install getvirtualbox from synaptic and then run the script in  More Applications > Emulators (automatically installs the guest additions).

What do you have in mind for this new setup, other than taking over the world etc?

[GermanTux]

As far as the least amount of resources, LXDE would be your best bet.  XFCE isn't far behind. 

KDE, in my experience, taxes as virtual machine, not so much on RAM/CPU usage but on display resources, even with compositing turned off. 

[joejac]

Hello Phil, thanks for the hints.
The World is already taken and not by me, otherwise it would work fine, without bugs

I was tired of my old laptop, a Pavilion dv6 core i7 8GB RAM HD 7200 with LXDE as Host, but it gets really slow and hot with 2 or 3 Virtual machines. In a couple of  minutes it almost burn my left hand even with a big fan underneath. The Win 7 VM, that I need for special development application software not available in Linux, is very hungry in resources.

So now with this desktop I hope will solve the problem, I am still in doubt of which to use LXDE or XFCE for Host. Probably, like GermanTux said, I will use LXDE, I was waiting for the 64 bits version, but I think it is going to take time. Hope I will not spent more money in hardware/windows for the next 3 years. I do not want to waste my money in more windows licenses, but PC factories bundle with it.

I plan to encrypt the SSD but I have many issues for this weekend, probably for monday. I would like to know if it is a really a "speed demon" like Intel states. I will allow my kid to play games, booting from Win 7 in the original 5400 HD. I will boot from  the SSD with Linux, for my work.

Best regards
joejac

[sir_herrbatka]

I start virtual machine without any DE (just plain x). I even added menu entry in KDE for it and it works very well.

[joejac]

Thanks sir_herrbatka

But my limited Linux experience do not allow me to do that.
I still depends too much on GUI.

Best regards
joejac

[sir_herrbatka]

/usr/bin/VirtualBox -startvm windows

to start virutal machine called "windows"

DISPLAY to start on new x session with just one app. so...

DISPLAY=:3 /usr/bin/VirtualBox -startvm windows

when typed to linux console should start window with windows virtual machine.

You can create custom kdm entry for this. First you create script with /usr/bin/VirtualBox -startvm windows then you create entry to point it in /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions/

and then you can select your virtual machine from kdm sessions menu while loging.

[ThirdOfSix]

I have tried it with several flavors as host.

Since I am more often using virtualbox as a quick test environment for other distributions that I am not familiar with, I normally use KDE simply because it is my most used and therefor most familiar environment.

When you are testing something in virtualbox that is going to be modifying files on your hard drive or network, you are likely to want to test the results from the host system.

You don't want to introduce errors in your interpretation of the results due to not being familiar with the tools available on the host system.

So unless you are dealing with very limited resources on your machine, I would always have the host be the environment that you are most familiar and comfortable with.

This goes double if you are not comfortable at the command line level.

[djohnston]

joejac,

Of the three desktops you mentioned, LXDE is the lightest on resources, then XFCE, with KDE using the most resources. If you have a powerful machine, it won't matter so much which desktop your host is running. I know you're going to be running some intensive Windows VMs. If you're already comfortable with LXDE, I'd stick with that. I currently run LXDE on both host computers that have VirtualBox installed. I previously used e17, but there are problems with the copy/paste buffer between the host and the guest, regardless of which is running e17.

[GermanTux]

I was tired of my old laptop, a Pavilion dv6 core i7 8GB RAM HD 7200 with LXDE as Host, but it gets really slow and hot with 2 or 3 Virtual machines. In a couple of  minutes it almost burn my left hand even with a big fan underneath. The Win 7 VM, that I need for special development application software not available in Linux, is very hungry in resources.
joejac

Laptop hardware is not really meant to run load-bearing type applications.  You did the right thign by switching to a desktop.