1 yr. ago • 100%

GPU Sharing Between VMs and a Host

This seems like the final technology in containing and categorizing different PC uses into different virtual machines, while still having good feel even in contained things. If set up right you can have a seamless experience tabbing between a host system and virtual system, and you can do whatever you can normally do in either one! Wanna use linux, but Discord hardly works and you like to play Halo too much to figure out how to dodge it's anti-~~linux~~cheat system? Now you can switch to linux and just run a single script to pull up a fully gaming capable (near bare metal performance) windows system right inside a linux system. Idk about y'all but as far as cool technology to talk about in here goes... this definitely fits for me. I feel like if more people knew this was something you could do relatively easily (if you enjoy tinkering with your OS) with MOST consumer Nvidia cards (20 series and older), Linux would've already passed 5%. What do y'all think about it? The ability to, off a single consumer CPU and GPU, host several acceptable, mid-performance, cloud accessible (or just virtually separate, locally accessible) PCs?

22 comments

Discord hardly works

Wut? I use Discord in Linux (Nobara) and it works just fine, including activity detection and screen sharing. Sure, Discord on Linux had some limitations in the past, but that's no longer an issue, assuming you're using a decent gaming-optimised distro like Nobara.

Linux would've already passed 5%

Highly unlikely. The low market share is mainly because a) Linux does not come pre-installed on most computers - the vast majority of users just buy prebuilt computers and use whatever OS it came with and don't tinker with their systems and b) most people like to use whatever system they're familiar with and will not change unless they have a very very compelling reason for switching.

In fact the only reason why the marketshare jumped recently is thanks to Steam Deck. If we want Linux numbers to go up, we need more systems like the Steam Deck, and more companies like Valve to work with upstream kernel and other projects to implement much needed features and accelerate development efforts.

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- Between the discord devs outright refusing to do any kind of sound capture for linux screen sharing for several years, many updates requiring you to manually download and install a fresh tarball instead of being automatically applied like on windows, and refusal to maintain any kind of package on most repositories, I'd say it doesn't properly support linux. I do like Nobara's version of it, whatever they've done (I haven't looked much into it but it definitely seems custom to Nobara, or at least Red hat) though.
  
  And speaking purely from personal experience with no real way to verify statistically (so take this with a rather large grain of salt), there are a LOT of CS or CE major types that would love to switch to it, but will be faced with random tools that they need like microchip studio, or some particular CAD software, just not working at all. For those that I've talked with at any length, if they could spin up a VM that effectively fully works as if it's bare metal, including proper display out that matches the monitor, whenever they need those few specific things, they would switch. They may not be many compared to 100% of global internet users, but they could certainly make up for 2%.
  
  That said I mostly agree that devices like the steam deck are where linux is gonna grow, I just think that it would be going faster if more devs were able to daily drive it and care more about it, instead of having to be stuck reliant on Windows
  
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- On my Linux machine, I still can only get apps running on xwayland to show up in screen sharing. GUIs on Linux were a mistake, it’s a mess all around.
  
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PCI/GPU Passthrough is amazing.

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- Close, but that's not what I mean. I mean SEAMLESS sharing, not playing tennis with it. Is it really so poorly known? Should I write up a little introduction to the parts of it that I'm familiar with?
  
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  It's relatively recent and support varies a lot from manufacturer to manufacturer. Although admittedly that is also true to an extent with GPU passthrough.
  
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Can anyone tell me if GPU pass through is available for any of the mainstream VM tools like VirtualBox, VMware on ubuntu or windows host? Last I checked, it was not possible. Has anything changed?

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- You can not just pass through, but share any¹ gpu you like using HyperV. Yes it's Win10Pro, but there are pleeeeenty of ways to get it enabled/installed/supported on Home as well. Though if you have an Nvidia card 20 series or older, and you're willing to dive into linux as a dual boot, I'd say qemu/virt-manager is a pretty mainstream VM solution, and vGPU is also a good tech for the same purpose.
  
  ₁ I'm not actually sure what the limits on hyperv are but it seems fairly robust. Don't quote me on it lol
  
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Why would anyone running Linux even have an Nvidia card?

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- Some people can’t afford to immediately buy an amd card when they switch to Linux
  
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- Because I rely on cuda.
  
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- Specifically to set up a system like the one I've finally got. A hypervisor that retains its own display capabilities, while being able to share the full GPU (though only set portions of VRAM) freely and on demand, with a VM. We can shit on Nvidia all we'd like for a lot of stuff, but vGPU works really well, even on cards it isn't meant to support LOL
  
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That would be awesome if we have seamless passthrough, let alone making a GPU be sharable across two or more VMs accessible to mainstream.

For now though its only available for enterprises, type 1 hypervisor and only for a limited set of hardware iirc.

1
- That's where you'd be wrong! I'm running it on my 1080ti right now. It can be hacked into working on just about any Nvidia card that's recent enough to want to use it. A bit of a community has ended up growing around a group that makes patches for the official vGPU drivers, along with merge scripts, to give the hypervisor the ability to retain regular function (accelerated display out through the DP/HDMIs), while also fooling the vGPU part of the driver into thinking the random consumer card is supported. Unfortunately locked down on 30 series and newer :(, but it's still a VERY cool use for a card like the 1080ti that has become VERY cheap
  
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